The world already knew that the largest structures in the world (prior to the Iron Age) were the Bronze Age megaforts of Central Europe. What they didn’t know—at least, until it was unveiled by new satellite and aerial images—is that those megaforts were connected in a previously unknown network of 100 massive sites that stitched together to form a complex society.
Archaeologists found that the “massive sites did not stand alone, they were part of a dense network of closely related and codependent communities,” Barry Molloy—one of the authors of the new study describing these structures, published in the journal PLOS One—said in a statement. “At their peak, the people living within this lower Pannonian network of sites must have numbered into the tens of thousands.”
Some of the largest megaforts—like Gradište Iđoš, Csanádpalota, Sântana, or Corneşti Iarcuri—were enclosed by over 20 miles of ditches and were the largest of the Bronze Age. They were located in the Carpathian Basin, which extends across central and southeast Europe and is cut through by the Danube River.
Hellbound and Down 