Dutch archaeologists on Wednesday discovered a nearly 4,000-year-old religious site dubbed the “Stonehenge of the Netherlands” by the country’s media, containing a burial mound that acts as a solar calendar. The cemetery, which contains the remains of about 60 men, women, and children, had several passages where the sun shines directly on the longest and shortest days of the year.

“What a wonderful archaeological discovery! Til Municipality announced on its Facebook page that archaeologists found a 4,000-year-old religious temple in an industrial site. The statement said, “This is the first time such a site has been discovered in the Netherlands.”

Excavations around the so-called “open-air sanctuary” in a small village about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southeast of Utrecht began in 2017, and the results were made public on Wednesday. Studying the difference in the composition and color of the clay, scientists found three burial mounds a few kilometers from the banks of the Vaal River. The main mound is about 20 meters (65 ft) in diameter and its corridors are lined up to act as a solar calendar.

“People used this calendar to mark important moments, including holidays and harvest days,” the archaeologists say.

“This hill resembled Stonehenge, a well-known mysterious prehistoric monument in England where this phenomenon also occurs,” added Dutch national broadcaster NOS.

Scientists also discovered two more small mounds. According to archaeologists, these three mounds were used as graveyards for about 800 years. They made another fascinating discovery: a single glass bead in the tomb showed, after analysis, that it came from Mesopotamia, modern Iraq.

“Four thousand years ago, this bead traveled a distance of about 5,000 kilometers,” said lead researcher Christian van der Linde. “Glass was not made here, so the bead must have been an impressive object since it was a material unknown to humans at the time,” added Stein Arnoldussen, a professor at the University of Groningen.

He told NOS that the Mesopotamian bead may have existed for a long time and eventually ended up in the area around Thiel called Betuwe in Dutch.

“In those days, things were already exchanged. The bead may have been above ground hundreds of years before it reached Thiel, but of course it’s not necessary,” he said. Source