Stonehenge: Neolithic monument found near sacred site

These structures are absolutely massive. I used to live in the area and it took me a long time to see Durrington Walls, partly because it's hard to imagine an earthwork on that scale. I literally did a double take when I realised that some earth banks were part of this huge construction.

The Walls are a small enclosure inside this much bigger complex, and they still cover an area bigger than Wembley stadium, which can seat up to 90,000 people.

This new ring of shafts - presumably with objects inside them - is slightly smaller than the entire town of Salisbury a few miles to the south. It makes the Old Sarum earthwork, which used to be Salisbury in medieval times, look like a footnote.

For a neolithic culture, it must have taken an absolutely insane amount of planning and physical effort - and this at a time when the total population of the British Isles was less than 200,000 people.

However you seem to have some misunderstandings of my post and personal positions. I am in full support of smashing the ivory tower, public access to archaeology (it's their heritage), and understanding the limits of our technology. What I do not support is trying to find some perceived gap and slotting in made up story, especially an unreasonable one. The grandparent is firmly in the latter.

Moreover, these kinds of wild stories do a great deal of harm to archaeology. I can't tell you how many burials I've seen looted because someone believed all graves have treasure. It's better to stick with the evidence we do have.

That really depends on what "people" you are talking about. There is a considerable market for fantastical misinformation about history, especially when the fantasy reinforces things we want to believe about ourselves today.

I have personally been led down a few story paths purporting to be historical but turning out to be nothing more recently constructed and idealized fantasies of the distant past.

I said "let's assume (...) that anything is possible", a completely different thing, so your argument that " we don't know if it's possible" is moot, and a classic case of a straw man argument.

> "while 'we don't know' is a perfectly acceptable position, it does not lead to,'therefore my pet idea is worthy'"

Again, you are mostly having an argument with yourself, as this is somewhat a misrepresentation of what I'm saying. My main point is that it behooves to be a bit humble when it comes to dismissing ideas that are possible albeit without firm evidence and that offhanded dismissal should be discouraged, unless one can actually disprove the claim. It is after all the stuff from which new knowledge is made. That doesn't mean that every scientist must engage and clamor to inspect the evidence for each fantastical claim (but I do believe that an active interest from the scientific community would help cleanse the scene of some of the more outrageous theories).

> "If you want people to take it seriously, you need to provide evidence."

Really? so all scientific endeavors must produce evidence before they are allowed to posit something? I think you will agree that this is an untenable position hold as a general principle, and you probably mean that any layman should not be allowed to posit anything without having the proper education and academic standing. Be that as it may, such ivory towers of academic snobbishness will fall, eventually.