Archaeologists are stunned by the discovery of 25 'incredibly significant' prehistoric pits dug in straight lines containing ancient animal bones

• Archaeologists recently found straight lines of 25 pits dating to around 8,000 years ago.
• The Mesolithic pits contain animal bones, including those of an extinct species of cattle.

The discovery of 25 large pits in Bedfordshire, England, created around 8,000 years ago, has surprised and excited archaeologists.

Radiocarbon dating puts the pits during the Mesolithic period, making the find "incredibly significant" because of the rarity of such sites in the UK, the Museum of London Archaeology, which was involved in the study, said in a press release.

The pits are arranged in straight lines, and a few contain animal bones with marks suggesting people ate them.

"While we know of other large and enigmatic pits dug by hunter-gatherers from elsewhere in Britain, including at Stonehenge, the Linmere pits are striking because of their number and the wide area they cover," Joshua Pollard, an archaeology professor at Southampton University, said in the release.

Digging the pits took a lot of work

Albion Archaeology found several of the pits in 2019, and MOLA archaeologists excavated more of them in 2021. The arrangement of the pits appears intentional, dug in several straight lines covering an area of up to about 1,600 feet.

The pits measure between up to 16 feet wide and up to 6 feet deep. Some had rounded bottoms, while others were flat. Digging the holes would've required significant effort, the release said.

Six of the pits contained about 400 fragments of animal bone, most of which belonged to a species of wild cattle known as aurochs, Albion Archaeology said in a press release. Aurochs went extinct in the 1600s. The majority of the bones were distributed across two pits. Flint was found in two pits, as well. Red deer, roe deer, and pig bones were also found in the pits.

While Mesolithic pits in France and other European countries are believed to have been dug as traps for animals, Pollard told Albion Archaeology that it's unlikely the ones in Bedfordshire served a similar purpose.

Instead, the hunter-gatherer societies may have had a symbolic reason for constructing them, which may have been related to a nearby body of water, the Ouzel Brook.

Similarities to Stonehenge pits

In 2020, archaeologists found a series of similarly sized pits near Stonehenge, the 5,000-year-old stone monument, The Guardian reported.

Though some experts said the holes were natural features, it was soon determined that they were human-made and dug around the time the monument was built.

Two years later, an electromagnetic induction survey of the area around Stonehenge revealed thousands of pits, some of which were dated to 10,000 years ago, the BBC reported.

The monument aligns with the sunrise's rays on the summer solstice, but the presence of the pits could indicate that Stonehenge held significance for millennia before its construction, Nick Snashall, an archaeologist with the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site, told the BBC.

Ice sheets began disappearing during the Mesolithic period. Rising sea levels isolated Britain from Europe about 8,500 years ago, which is one reason why archaeologists are interested in studying the Bedfordshire site and learning more about the communities that lived in the area.

The researchers at MOLA plan to investigate whether the Bedfordshire pits' arrangement coincides with the solstice or other celestial events. If so, it could suggest why the area held meaning for the people who dug them.