WALES

Around the World July 1, 2011

By Samir S. Patel

In The Lord of the Rings, flaming hilltop beacons are used to communicate between distant kingdoms. But they might not just be fantasy.

WALES: In The Lord of the Rings, flaming hilltop beacons are used to communicate between distant kingdoms. But they might not just be fantasy. Iron Age hillforts could have had a similar purpose 2,500 years ago. To test it, a heritage group organized the "Hillfort Glow Experiment," getting 350 volunteers to communicate between 10 hillforts with flares and flashlights (no Middle Earth pyres, though—it is fragile habitat). In some cases, the glow connected hills 25 miles apart.

Hillforts of the Iron Age

Searching for evidence of cultural changes that swept the prehistoric British Isles

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(Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales)

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Unidentified Island, English Channel

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(Chensiyuan/ Wikimedia Commons)

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Photograph by R. Słaboński
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© Tolga İldun
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Courtesy Sichuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology
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How the rapidly evolving field of archaeogenetics is unlocking secrets of the past

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AdobeStock/lucaar