The Severn-Cotswold tomb built 1,500 years before Stonehenge

Parc Cwm long cairn, also known as the Parc le Breos burial chamber, is a partly restored Neolithic chambered tomb located on the Gower Peninsula, about seven and a half miles west south-west of Swansea. Identified in 1937 as a Severn-Cotswold type of chambered long barrow, the cromlech was built around 5,850 years before present (BP) during the early Neolithic. The site sits on the floor of a dry narrow limestone gorge containing about 500 acres of woodland.

The tomb features a trapezoidal cairn of rubble about 72 feet (22 m) long by 43 feet (13 m) wide, revetted by a low dry-stone wall. At the entrance, the kerbs sweep inwards to form a pair of deep protrusions, or horns, forming a narrow bell-shaped forecourt. This leads to a central passageway lined with limestone slabs set on end. Two pairs of stone chambers lead from the passageway, where human remains had been placed. The tomb was in use for between 300 and 800 years.

Discovery of the site in 1869 by workmen revealed human bones belonging to at least 40 people, along with animal remains and Neolithic pottery. While North-West European lifestyles changed around 6000 BP from nomadic hunter-gatherer lives to settled agricultural farming, analysis of the human remains at Parc Cwm long cairn shows the people interred in the cromlech continued to be either hunter-gatherers or herders, rather than agricultural farmers.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons