Artificial mound protected Britain for thousands of years

Silbury Hill is a Brobdingnagian artificial hill in southerly England , about 130 feet gamy and covering five Akko . Europe ’s expectant contrived pile , it may have been built by the makers of Stonehenge … but they definitely were n’t the last to use it .

Many ancient cultures work up gargantuan earthen cumulus as centrepiece for their metropolis and settlements . For example , The Mississippian civilisation , North America ’s most sinewy civilisation before European tangency , built several Brobdingnagian agglomerate in city - country that stretched from what is now Louisiana to Minnesota , at its height match the powerfulness of the Mayan metropolis - states to the S .

While these ancient North American cities were sometimes home to more than a hundred such mounds , Silbury Hill is jolly much on its own , a lonely mound near the prehistorical British settlement of Avebury , which includes the Avebury Henge , gemstone dress circle and avenue , and elaborate raised graves known as lawn cart . The entire Avebury arena is about 20 miles away from the more notable Stonehenge , and both date to roughly 5,000 years ago .

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Although it ’s generally shadow by Stonehenge , Silbury Hill is just as remarkable an accomplishment , a all artificial mud mound about as great as a mid - sized Egyptian pyramid . But unlike Stonehenge , it appears Silbury Hill was not a singular structure , but rather one built and modified over countless generations , including a complete reimagining of its design by Anglo - Saxons some 4,000 years after it was first build .

Archaeologist Jim Leary believe the older narratives of the mound ’s construction , which speak of three stages of construction , are woefully incomplete . or else , he state there are at least 15 trenchant phases of construction between about 2,400 and 2,300 BCE . He also says this work out the closed book of why the pitcher’s mound was built in the first place . He believes these ancient builders were never really concerned with what it looked like or what determination it might swear out other than as a affair to build in and of itself :

“ The received Wisdom of Solomon was the James Jerome Hill was constructed as a individual construct . We had this idea that there was a blueprint . What was the most remarkable thing about us going into the burrow was that it was n’t a single twist . It was really made up of caboodle of tiny phases . It seems as if the hill developed organically and the strangest matter is that this has n’t always been a hill . The first phases of it were a bank and ditch enclosure , much like a henge monument . ”

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Its original builders likely only had antler that they had modified into basic picks . As Leary points out , those who started study on the anatomical structure could not sleep together what the ruined mound would look like three generations down the road , or even how big it would eventually be . That , he says , is a big going from the older tale , which see the mound as a more deliberately made structure .

Whatever the original intention of its Neolithic detergent builder , the Anglo - Saxons were able to make great use of it in the Medieval full point , around the year 1,000 . Leary says there ’s clear evidence of modification from this relatively recent period that turned Silbury Hill into a defensive complex body part , most potential in response to Viking invasions that could make use of a nearby Romanic road . The encounter of finish here is a flake dizzying – Anglo - Saxons rely on Neolithic monuments to stand off Scandinavian invaders who were assisted by give up Roman engineering .

Today , Silbury Hill is , along with Stonehenge , part of the UNESCO World Heritage internet site rather unimaginatively dub Stonehenge , Avebury and Associated Sites . Leary ’s new book , The Story of Silbury Hill , comes outat the end of the year .

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