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9k-Year-Old Stonehenge-Like Structure Found Under Lake Michigan

252 points| djsumdog | 5 years ago |archaeology-world.com

77 comments

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[+] blakesterz|5 years ago|reply
It was found a few years ago, and the guy that found it has some stuff on his own site:

https://holleyarchaeology.com/wordpress/index.php/the-truth-...

[+] cholmon|5 years ago|reply
Great context. From that site:

> Sadly, much of the information out there is incorrect. For example, there is not a henge associated with the site and the individual stones are relatively small when compared to what most people think of as European standing stones. It should be clearly understood that this is not a megalith site like Stonehenge.

[+] colanderman|5 years ago|reply
From the sidebar: "SHOCK CLAIM: Crystal Pyramids ‘found beneath Bermuda Triangle’"

… I'm not sure this site is a reputable source.

[+] reaperducer|5 years ago|reply
It doesn't look like it.

No contact information. No authors listed for the articles. The only links in the article go to the biography of a small town TV reporter, and Wikipedia. No links to the original source material.

Looks like a content farm to me.

[+] reillyse|5 years ago|reply
Is the crystal pyramid causing the Triangle phenomena? though....
[+] edgarvaldes|5 years ago|reply
As a non American we learn (just a little) about ancient civilizacions from all around the globe but nothing about North American ones, as if they never existed.
[+] freehunter|5 years ago|reply
For the most part we don’t learn about them because we don’t know a lot about them. Many of the pre-Colombian civilizations either didn’t build permanent structures or built them from wood that’s long since rotted away. With a few exceptions they also didn’t congregate in large stationary cities where we can dig to find hundreds/thousands of years of artifacts in the same place . Again with a few exceptions, they also didn’t write down their history for us to read it.

As an American we only learn fairly superficial details about the people who were here before us, because we know they existed but there’s just not a lot of historical record. Look up Cahokia, which was a massive city (at Cahokia’s peak it likely had more residents than London did at the same time). And yet all that remains is some piles of dirt.

[+] cmckn|5 years ago|reply
I grew up in the southern US, and we didn’t learn a lot either beyond a couple chapters about local native populations. I learned much more in some classes in college — the American Southwest has been home to several very advanced civilizations and the archaeological record is astounding.
[+] MeinBlutIstBlau|5 years ago|reply
Imagine Europe during 6000-2000 BC. That is basically the equivalent of what colonizers came to. There wasn't enough to be discovered because the majority of them were still nomadic. Even the cahokia mounds showed that North American civilizations were short lived.
[+] chapium|5 years ago|reply
Part of what makes this difficult is a lack of written language for many of these. Also, humans existing in north america is a lot more recent than other ancient civilizations.
[+] alexmingoia|5 years ago|reply
Not necessarily ancient, but if you’re interested in learning about American civilizations prior to European contact, I highly recommend the book 1491 by Charles Mann. It’s a fascinating read.
[+] tsjq|5 years ago|reply
Is that because the European invaders almost wiped off all traces of culture, people, & civilization that existed before their arrival?
[+] phkahler|5 years ago|reply
This seems as likely to be a prank as real. The great lakes were formed when the glaciers melted. Prior to that the area was under kilometers of ice. Nothing in the geological record seems to allow for humans walking about in that location at any time.

But we shall see...

[+] mfer|5 years ago|reply
I was reading an article this summer about another possible find under the Great Lakes. The article talks about things submerged in the Great Lakes. From the article [1]...

> John O'Shea, professor and curator of the Great Lakes Archaeology at the University of Michigan in his laboratory on Oct. 14, 2020. In 2009, he published a research paper on discoveries of evidence of an ancient culture around the time of the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago, submerged off the shore of Lake Huron around Alpena, Mich. in an area that would have been dry land at that time.

I realize the article is a mix of things. Unverified possible things along with more scientific details.

[1] https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2020/10/14/s...

[+] maxerickson|5 years ago|reply
The video discusses the lake level dropping for a period of several thousand years. So there maybe is something in the geological record that allows for humans to be walking about there?
[+] wyck|5 years ago|reply
Lake Agassiz in present day Manitoba was larger then all the great lakes combined, after the last glacial period. Most of it is now livable land. Water moves around, it would be very presumptuous to think you know what the shorelines and lakes were like in the last 12000 years.
[+] kkoncevicius|5 years ago|reply
> The site in Grand Traverse Bay is best described as a long line of stones which is over a mile in length.

Hard to imagine someone dedicated to pulling off a prank like that.

[+] ncmncm|5 years ago|reply
Mastodons disappeared from North America ~12,800 years ago, 10,800 BCE, coincident with extinction of 31 other large-animal genera, basically everything except bear, bison, and moose. (A bear much larger than the grizzly disappeared too.)

Unless you believe in people maintaining memories of mastodons for 1800 years, or pareidolia finding an image not really there, we are talking about a structure much older than 9000 years.

[+] dukeofdoom|5 years ago|reply
The photo in the article looks very murky. But Lake Michigan can look really Blue in the summer, and has places with great sand beaches. It feels almost tropical in the summer. Probably the zebra mussels filtering the lake have cleared it up.
[+] EvanAnderson|5 years ago|reply
The zebra mussels are what I always heard the clearing attributed to. I spent a lot of summers in the Grand Traverse Bay area in the 80s and 90s. The water got a lot clearer in the later 90s. It's spooky-clear now. (Beautiful area-- I wish there was work there to support my family. I'd move in a heartbeat...)
[+] reaperducer|5 years ago|reply
There's an event every year called the "whiting" of Lake Michigan.

Then the Spring sun warms the water, it reacts with the limestone at the bottom and causes large white swirls through the water. I've seen pictures on it on local TV newscasts taken from helicopters.

[+] mgraczyk|5 years ago|reply
The photo of the stonehenge-like structure underwater is unrelated to the contents of the article. The actual structure is roughly a line of stones, not a circle.
[+] dmix|5 years ago|reply
This is not a Stonehenge-all like at all (the slightly more interesting bit is a possible mastodon 'painting'). IF it's anything it's most likely a small native American driving trail used for hunting game as the video mentions.

Where lining up small rocks is sufficient in a V like shape into a 'kill zone'.

Stonehenge on the otherhand is an amazing human achievement for the era it was made.

[+] dukeofdoom|5 years ago|reply
In tropical places they create monuments or statues and sink them to make it more interesting to go dive on. I'm not sure if its been done on the great lakes too.

I know Tobermory in Ontario is a famous dive spot for a near surface tanker ship that sank there. Its something I miss about Europe. So many interesting artifacts to look at.

[+] aerovistae|5 years ago|reply
Does it say anywhere at what depth they found this? Just wondering how it will ever be shared with people.
[+] vl|5 years ago|reply
Judging by the sonar image in the article linked in the top comment it’s 40 feet deep, which is trivial depth for scuba diving.
[+] nsajko|5 years ago|reply
Wikipedia and the archaeologist's site linked here say 40 feet, in Grand Traverse Bay.
[+] intricatedetail|5 years ago|reply
How do you think in 9000 years people will discover what we have been up to today? Most of our culture will be a weird looking silicon rocks.
[+] maxerickson|5 years ago|reply
One thing that jumps to mind is that there's a thin layer of lead and radioactive stuff on everything.
[+] pengaru|5 years ago|reply
They'll hunt for silicon chips as we do arrowheads?
[+] permo-w|5 years ago|reply
Gravestones will probably be our main lasting record
[+] gotem|5 years ago|reply
Crazy. Have there been any details revealed yet on how it was transported? Stonehenge is thousands of miles from Michigan
[+] nick_kline|5 years ago|reply
This is a separate site that doesn't have rocks from the famous UK stonehenge. The idea is it might be independently created, as a natural thing people might make to track things like the sun or other astronomical movements (like the movement of the sun at the solstices). And if the age is about 9,000 years old, a little older than the uk stonehenge.