Tag Archive for Gilgal Refaim

Mysterious ‘Stonehenge’ in Golan Heights Vexes Israeli Archaeologists

 

Weighing in at over 40,000 tons, the enigmatic concentric circles known as the “Wheel of Spirits” is made of thousands of basalt rocks that are some 5,000 year old. 
• “We have bits of information, but not the whole picture,” admits an Israeli antiquities expert.

Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff

 

Driving past it, one of the most mysterious structures in the Middle East is easy to miss. The prehistoric stone monument went unnoticed for centuries in a bare expanse of field on the Golan Heights.

Gilgal Refaim, Israel’s “Stonehenge”: Scholars generally agree that construction started as early as 3,500 BCE – Photo: Wikimedia Commons

After Israel captured the territory from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War, archaeologists studying an aerial survey spotted a pattern of stone circles not visible from the ground. Continue Reading »