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One of Europe’s largest prehistoric monuments has been found under the ground a mile from Stonehenge.

Archaeologists using radar machines have discovered at least 90 stones, some nearly 15ft tall, which once formed an arena on Salisbury Plain, Wilts.

It may have been used for religious rituals over 4,500 years ago.

The stones are on their sides under three feet of earth on the edge of the Durrington Walls, a neolithic settlement.

(Image: PA) (Image: PA)

Experts believe they were deliberately toppled to help create the C-shaped earth bank that can be seen today. But archaeologists do not yet know when that happened.

One of the project’s lead archaeologists Prof Vince Gaffney, from the University of Bradford , said: “It’s truly remarkable. We don’t think there’s anything quite like this anywhere else. This is completely new and the scale is ­extraordinary.

“We’re looking at one of the largest stone monuments in Europe and it’s been under our noses for something like 4,000 years.”

He said the stones may have been placed there by the same people who built the 5,000-year-old Stonehenge.

(Image: PA)

(Image: PA)

He said: “These things are theatrical, designed to impress and impose; to give the idea of authority to the living and the dead.

“It was clearly important enough to have been drawn into the developing landscape. The stones had significance.

“Societies are mobilised, as with the great cathedrals, to create these things.”

Ninety stones, which may be sarsen sandstone like ­Stonehenge , have been found. Experts think there may be more.

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