ArchaeoTrek—

The Avebury, England—Newark, Ohio Link—Is It a Coincidence?

By Dr. Greg Little

Avebury is located about 6 miles from Marlborough and is south of London. There are a few BnB’s there and several small hotels in nearby towns. Newark, Ohio is east of Columbus and is the site of a massive complex of earthworks and mounds and many are part of Ohio’s Historical Society operated sites. Portions of this article come from The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Native American Mounds & Earthworks.

For some years I have noted an astonishing “coincidence” between the massive earthwork and stone circles complex at Avebury in southern England and a nearly identical earthwork in Newark, Ohio. The circular earthwork embankment at Avebury contains an area of about 30 acres, and it dwarfs the better-known Stonehenge. About a dozen Stonehenges would fit inside the Avebury circle. The outer earthwork at Avebury, called a “henge” in the U.K., is thought to have been constructed starting around 4,000 B.C. It consists of 36-foot deep moat or “ditch” located to the inside of a high embankment of earth that rings the site. The inner ditch averages 69-feet in width. Around the inner perimeter of the ditch, arranged into a huge ring, were once 98 sarsen stones embedded into the ground standing 9 to 15-feet in height. Two smaller stone rings were inside the formation and several outer stone avenues led in to the structure. In his book, The Cygnus Mystery, Andrew Collins showed how Avebury was aligned to the Cygnus Constellation, as are many other U.K. henges.

The Newark complex is an enormous set of mounds, long parallel lines of embankments (one of which ran 56-miles to the south), and extensive earthworks formed into massive circles, squares, and even an octagon. The overall formation defies description and can be seen here. One of the main circular formations at Newark is called the “Great Circle” or “Fairgrounds Circle” (because the county fair was once conducted inside it). It is a near perfect circular earthwork that encloses 30 acres—the same dimensions as Avebury. The circle is formed by an outer embankment 9-feet high and just to its inside is a moat or ditch 7-feet deep. This is also the same arrangement as Avebury. Of course, the Newark site was constructed about 3500 years after Avebury and does not have the standing stone circles. But curiously, Newark is also aligned to the Cygnus Constellation. This fact was first uncovered by Andrew Collins and is detailed in The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Native American Mounds & Earthworks.

Many people have long suggested that America’s Mound Builder Culture was somehow influenced by a pre-Columbian contact from Europe. There are numerous other examples of identical structures in the U.K. and America, but the Avebury—Newark similarity is one that strikes me as very significant.