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Judi Lynn

(160,545 posts)
Wed Sep 13, 2023, 12:43 AM Sep 2023

Scotland Claims it's Found 5,000 Year Old Monument on 'par with Stonehenge' on the Isle of Arran

By Andy Corbley -Sep 12, 2023



Excavation of the eastern bank of the Drumadoon cursus in summer 2021 – Univ. of Glasgow


On Scotland’s Isle of Arran, national archaeologists are abuzz that a new ‘cursus’ has been found that is proving to be the most complete and best-preserved monument of this kind ever found in Britain—greater even than Stonehenge.

A cursus is not a stone circle, but rather a massive earthwork, and this one found at a place called Drumadoon was built by Neolithic farmers around 3,500 BCE, and it stretches 0.6 miles.

These kinds of landscape monuments were given the name ‘cursus’ after the Latin word for ‘course,’ and in fact the cursus at Stonehenge was at one point believed to be an ancient chariot racing track.

Their purpose is difficult to divine, and their shape and size differ from place to place, but essentially they take the form of a processional course that leads past other monuments like barrow mounds, stone circles, burial cairns, and standing stones. Indeed if stone circles are the Neolithic equivalent of the Roman Colosseum, then the cursus is the equivalent of the Roman Forum.

More:
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/scotland-claims-its-found-500-year-old-monument-on-par-with-stonehenge-on-the-isle-of-arran/

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