Russian researchers have discovered a huge geoglyph (900ft/275m long) in the shape of an elk or deer in the Ural Mountains, which may predate the Nazca Lines in Peru by thousands of years:
“The figure would initially have looked white and slightly shiny against the green grass background,” write Stanislav Grigoriev, of the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of History & Archaeology, and Nikolai Menshenin, of the State Centre for Monument Protection, in an article first detailing the discovery published last spring in the journal Antiquity. They note that it is now covered by a layer of soil.
Fieldwork carried out this past summer has shed more light on the glyph’s composition and date, suggesting it may be the product of a “megalithic culture,” researchers say. They note that hundreds of megalithic sites have been discovered in the Urals, with the most elaborate structures located on a freshwater island about 35 miles (60 km) northeast of the geoglyph.
…They’ve found that the stone architecture of the geoglyph is quite elaborate. When they excavated part of a hind leg the largest stones were on the edges, the smaller ones inside. This past summer they also found the remains of passageways and what appear to be small walls on the hoof and muzzle of the animal.
“The hoof is made of small crushed stones and clay. It seems to me there were very low walls and narrow passages among them. The same situation in the area of a muzzle: crushed stones and clay, four small broad walls and three passages,” Grigorievwrote in an email to LiveScience. He cautioned that his team didn’t excavate all the way down to the bottom of the walls, not wishing to damage the geoglyph.
Full story at MSNBC.com.
