Ancient mysterious structure found in the southeast Wales, Monmouth Ancient mysterious structure found in the southeast Wales, Monmouth Sun Jun 24, 2012 12:38PM GMT 1 The archaeologists have excavated a foundation in southeast Wales that appears to have been a massive, ancient structure with unrecognized identity.
As the researchers unearthed the structure on an ancient lake in Monmouth (a town known for its rich archaeological features), they suggest it may have been a bridge to an artificial island.
They also claim that the recent discovery is a strange ruin as it is unlike anything found before in the United Kingdom and possibly all of Europe.
"It's a real mystery. Whatever it is, there is nothing else like it. It may well be unique," said chairman and founding member of the Monmouth Archaeological Society, Steve Clarke, who discovered the structural remains earlier this month in Monmouth, Wales.
Clarke and his team also found the remnants of three giant timber beams located alongside one another on a floodplain at the edge of an ancient lake that has long been filled with silt.
At the beginning steps of the research, the team thought that the timber structures were once sleeper beams, or shafts of the timber in the ground to form the foundations of a house, but shortly after they identified that the pieces were too large for that purpose.
"One other thing that is striking, that might be relevant, is that the timbers seem to be lined up with the middle of the lake," Clarke noted.
He suggests that the structures may have been part of a causeway to a crannog, or artificial island, constructed in the middle of the lake.
While the archaeologists are still digging, they cannot estimate the exact date of its creation but believe, at its oldest, it could date to the Bronze Age around 4,000 years ago.
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