(ORDO NEWS) — In England, scientists are asking the public to help them solve the mystery of an unusual stone carving that has left experts scratching their heads.
The mysterious sandstone specimen was discovered this summer during excavations at a site known as Nescliff Hill in Shrewsbury.
The strange stone carving has baffled archaeologists Paul Reilly and Gary Locke, who led the excavation, because they do not know what exactly the drawing wanted to convey and when it could have been made.
Hoping to find answers, representatives of the district where the mysterious stone was discovered turned to the residents with a call to solve the riddle.
The design on the stone, which has been dubbed the “Nessglyph”, has two characteristic features: a round indentation and a series of lines.
Reilly explained that these two details “indicate two different types of technology – grinding and carving.”
He further suggested that the figure depicts a certain figure, where the depression is the head, and the various scratches represent “two long horns and two small horns, the central line of the body and two arms, one of which is raised up and the other is lowered down, and raised up indicates a possible hand holding a pipe or weapon.”
Although the drawing suggests that it is a horned figure, he pointed out that placing it in a historical context is a very different task.
Noting that “the carvings bear a resemblance to late Bronze Age carvings of figures wearing horned helmets,” Reilly noted that the region was once the domain of a Roman tribe known as the Cornovii, who “were called ‘horned’.”
He also put forward another theory that the drawing is associated with “the cult of the horned deity in the Roman army, depicted on several military installations throughout Britain.”
Since Nesglyph was found in soil that had been filled in an archaeological trench dug in 1950, he laments that the lack of “reliable context” makes it difficult to date.
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