A team of archaeologists has found a mysterious underwater stone monolith off the coast of Sicily that closely resembles Stonehenge.
The "Submurged Stonehenge" was found off the coast of Sicily at a depth of 131 foot in an area that was once an island in the Sicilian Channel.
The archaeologists were shocked to make this discovery and were quick to debunk any thoughts that the structure might not be man-made, according to Discovery News.
"There are no reasonable known natural processes that may produce these elements," said Zvi Ben-Avraham, from the Department of Earth Sciences at Tel Aviv University, and Emanuele Lodolo, from the National Institute of Oceanography and Experimental Geophysics in Trieste, Italy.
The structure was found broken into two parts, and it possesses a regular shape and features three holes going right through the middle. However, what truly amazed the team was that the size and weight of the structure meant that whoever built it possessed strong engineering capabilities, ZME Science reported.
"The monolith found, made of a single, large block, required a cutting, extraction, transportation and installation, which undoubtedly reveals important technical skills and great engineering. The belief that our ancestors lacked the knowledge, skill and technology to exploit marine resources or make sea crossings, must be progressively abandoned," they said. "The recent findings of submerged archaeology have definitively removed the idea of 'technological primitivism' often attributed to hunter-gatherers coastal settlers."
The archaeologists believe this Stonehenge wound up underwater after the island where it once stood became submerged after water levels rose following the Ice Age.
It isn't clear exactly why the monolith was built or whether it belonged to a larger structure, according to The Tulane Hullabaloo. It's possible that the structure could have had a practical purpose (like a lighthouse) or was maybe even religious in nature.
Regardless of its purpose, archaeologists hope that this new discovery will shed light on ancient Mediterranean civilizations.
The team published their findings in the July 15 issue of Journal of Archaeological Science.
