LONDON, Feb. 4 (Xinhua) -- A team of archaeologists may have discovered a camp for some of the architects of the 5,000-year-old Stonehenge located in Wiltshire, England, the Guardian reported.
The team has been investigating a causewayed enclosure, a type of large prehistoric earthwork common in Europe, on army land at nearby Larkhill, which is within walking distance from the stone circle.
The researchers found an alignment of posts that is similar to the Stonehenge circle, which suggests that the area was used as a "blueprint" for the famous landmark, the report noted.
The proximity of Larkhill and the coincidence of the alignment of the nine posts added to the plausibility of the idea that the people who created the enclosure could be connected to the creation of Stonehenge, Si Cleggett of Wessex Archaeology was quoted by Guardian as saying.
Cleggett's team believes the meeting place was built between 3,750 and 3,650 BC. This is more than 600 years ahead of the first version of Stonehenge, which only had upright timber posts with no stones yet. Stones began to arrive 500 years later, around 2,500 BC.
The causewayed enclosure at Larkhill was built during the late Stone Age, when ancestors were experiencing a gradual transition from a mobile hunting lifestyle to a farming one, Cleggett noted.
