Stonehenge Discovery using 3D Laser Scanning

Alligator Descartes writes "The BBC reports - 'High-tech lasers have been used to unlock the secrets of Stonehenge. The work at the ancient site in Wiltshire has already uncovered two carvings which are invisible to the naked eye.' The project website contains lots of images plus some nice animations of the scan data."

But how do they know...

[YanceyAI]

The article says researchers are hoping the carvings will help them better understand Stonehenge. I visited the site, but I can't tell if they are implying that they know the carvings and the arrangement of the stones were done by the same people.

Could the stone arrangement predate the carvings?

Does anyone know if there is proof that understanding the carvings will actually help them understand Stonehenge? Maybe the axes are just bronze age graffiti.

Re:They look rather dubious to me

[PhysicsExpert]

This is actually a very good point, the impact marks do look very crude and not at all like the type of art found at sites of a similar age. Perhaps the best way would be analyse the stones in a mass spectrometer to look for traces of metal from an axe.

I think the most impressive thing about stonehenge is that in order to build it, the neaderthal men would have had to understand an awful lot about the world. They managed to align it so that it produces perfectly circular shadows on the two solstice days, which implies that not only did they realise that the sun was at the center of the solar system, but they had correctly estimated the earth-sun distance to within .5%. As an example of how impressive this was, the stones were disturbed in the mid 17th Centuary and the best scholars of the day (including Robert Hooke) were unable to realign them properly. It was only a hundred years later with the invention of mechanical calculating machines that the correct positions could be identified and the correct shadows re-established.

It just shows

[Anonym1ty]

Isn't is amazing how the aliens who built stonehenge carved pictures on it knowing only modern man would be able to view them once he had discovered lasers.

Bridges... get your bridges right here

Re:Erm, radio carbon dating huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The site was carbon dated by the packing that was used to hold the stones in position. When you put up a stone you do not simply put it in the ground, you use packing to hold it in position. This packing was made from carbon datable material.

The reason for axes is that Stonehenge was built at the cusp of the stone age and the bronze age. The ability to create Bronze allowed for the development of weaponary. Whoever developed it would be successful in war. It was the equivalent of the atom bomb. Axes were what allowed for a group to have the power to build Stonehenge.

Incidentally in Arthur and Stonehenge Emmett Sweeny states that the sword in the stone King Arthur legend dates from the start of the Bronze Age because the a sword is made from stone (ore) and an anvil (actually quite a few people eg Time Team have said the same).

Ed