(ORDO NEWS) — An ancient structure of unknown purpose was discovered while laying a fiber optic cable in the city of Torreano, near Udine in northeastern Italy.
It is made of heavy stone slabs – two long walls and a short back topped with a “roof” – forming a rectangle.
At first glance, archaeologists thought it was a grave box, but excavations have found no evidence that it ever contained human remains. All it contains is silty, muddy soil typical of waterways.
The most plausible hypothesis so far is that it was a dam built to allow carts to pass through an ancient watercourse that ran through the structure.
A culvert or drainpipe is another possibility, but rough hewn heavy stone slabs are not ideal for the job.
Considering the heavy weight and massive size of the stones, this was probably some kind of important infrastructure project that required the investment of personnel and raw materials, and not something quickly erected by a local farmer.
There is no stratigraphic information in this find, and otherwise it would be virtually impossible to date a group of heavy stone slabs without accompanying artifacts or amenable to radiocarbon or dendrochronological analysis.
In general, we do not know what it is and how old it is, but in any case it is impressive.
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