CNN —The ruins of an “incredibly rare” 5,000-year-old tomb have been uncovered on one of the Scottish Orkney Islands, National Museums Scotland said in a statement on Tuesday. “In the Neolithic, it would have been an incredibly impressive 15 meter diameter, enormous mound, very substantial stonework, very impressive architecture. Those cells are real feats of engineering,” Hugo Anderson-Whymark, one of the excavation’s co-directors and senior curator of prehistory (Neolithic) at National Museums Scotland, told CNN. National Museums ScotlandOnly 12 other similar tombs are known to exist in Orkney, referred to as Maes Howe-type passage graves. There’s nothing on the surface to suggest this tomb ever existed there but it would have once been an incredible monument.

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Persons: ” Hugo Anderson, Whymark, Vicki Cummings, Maes Howe, James Walls Cursiter, ” Anderson, “, they’ve, ” Organizations: CNN, National Museums Scotland, Cardiff University, Museums Scotland Locations: Scottish Orkney Islands, Holm , East Mainland, Orkney, Britain