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When tidal erosion exposed a mysterious Bronze Age structure on a beach in Norfolk, England, it captured the imaginations of archaeologists and pagans alike, who recognized the site may hold spiritual significance.
When it was constructed in the late spring of 2049 BCE, Seahenge was at no risk of tidal erosion. It was built on a salt marsh away from the shore, protected by sand dunes and mud flats. In the swampy marsh, the timbers were cradled by peat that once protected them from decay.The more recent exposure of Seahenge is, in some ways, a climate story of its own – one of the many archaeological gauges exposed by the tides, showing sea levels encroaching higher on land than they have in millennia.
"We know that the period in which they were constructed 4,000 years ago was a prolonged period of decreased atmospheric temperatures and severe winters and late springs placing these early coastal societies under stress," He notes the timbers were felled in spring, and arranged to align with the sunrise on the summer solstice.
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