|14 May 2012 Ancient Swedish stone structure spurs debate
Ancient Scandinavians dragged 59 boulders to a seaside cliff
near what is now the Swedish fishing village of Kaseberga. They
carefully arranged the massive stones - each weighing up to
1,800 kilograms - in the outline of a 67-meter-long ship
overlooking the Baltic Sea. Archaeologists generally agree this
megalithic structure, known as Ales Stenar ('Ale's Stones'), was
assembled near the end of the Iron Age, as a burial monument.
But a team of researchers now argues it's really 2,500 years
old, dating from the Scandinavian Bronze Age, and was built as
an astronomical calendar with the same underlying geometry as
England's Stonehenge. Nils-Axel Moerner, a retired geologist
from Stockholm University, co-authored the paper published in
March in the International Journal of Astronomy and
Astrophysics. Moerner says his team observed that the sun rises
and sets at specific points around Ales Stenar at the summer and
winter solstices. They also observed that c