SURPRISING SWISS STONEHENGE

But how did it get to the bottom of Lake Constance?

The news made headlines in Switzerland: A Stonehenge has been discovered in Lake Constance? A Neolithic relic with 8-foot stones? In 2015 mysterious rock piles were found resting at the bottom of Lake Constance, a 200-square-mile body of water that borders Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. Archaeologists sent a ship with a digger and a 50-foot arm for displacing material to unearth the stones. They quickly determined that the structures were man-made rather than natural. Using a prototype georadar device to assess sediment and stone deposits, the researchers determined that these piles of stone were resting atop accumulated debris left behind by retreating glaciers and post-glacial banded lake deposits. However the regularity of the cairns indicated the site was man-made. The debris from the glacial moraine was created about 18,000 years ago, but the stones were clearly piled up by human hands at least 12,000 years later. Various ideas were proposed to explain the purpose of these piles: They might have served as weirs or burial mounds, or they may have been sign posts for transportation routes.

The stone piles were laid at regular intervals running parallel to the Swiss shoreline and about 1,000 feet away. Remarkable in themselves, they may be only the tip of the archaeological iceberg. When they were constructed they may have been located along the shoreline or in shallow water, perhaps close to a settlement of lake dwellings that are now much deeper underwater. These might simply be undiscovered, or perhaps they have already been destroyed. Urs Leuzinger from the Archaeology Department of Canton Thurgau says there are similarities with Britain’s Stonehenge in that both monuments entailed great effort for prehistoric people to transport such a large amount of big stones. “But we have no intention of competing with the original Stonehenge,” he says, noting that the “Swiss Stonehenge” moniker was advanced by the media and not by archaeologists. In all, the researchers have counted 170 piles of stones with a total volume of nearly 18,000 cubic feet—far more than was used to build Britain’s Stonehenge. So far no archaeologist has been able to say definitively what the stones were originally used for. As Leuzinger says, “We’ve never seen anything like it.”

Surveyors remeasuring the depth of Lake Constance came across strange man-made stone structures on the lake bed. The stones in the cairns, most likely created by inhabitants of nearby lake dwellings, are as large as 100 inches across.

Some researchers speculate that the cairns were aligned to point to the rising sun on the morning of the winter solstice. Could the site that’s now covered by the lake have been a Neolithic burial ground? So far no one has been able to definitively determine the original purpose. South shore of Lake Constance 970 tons/cairn max. 10 ft The 170 cairns stretch out like a string of beads in shallow water about 1,000 feet from the shore. The piles of stones are spaced out at regular intervals at a depth of 15 feet and are positioned parallel to the shore. The stones are around 5,500 years old.