While excavating a Stone Age burial site in Germany, archaeologists stumbled upon a mysterious "earth tunnel" that someone made in the Middle Ages, thousands of years after the grave was dug, possibly to hide their furtive ritual practices.
At the end of 2025, the German State Office for Heritage Management and Archaeology (LDA) of Saxony-Anhalt was surveying land near the village of Dornberg ahead of a construction project. Archaeologists initially uncovered a trapezoidal ditch from the fourth millennium B.C., several Neolithic burials from the third millennium B.C., and a Bronze Age burial mound from the second millennium B.C., according to a Jan. 29 translated statement.
But during the excavations, the archaeologists spotted a long, oval pit and a large stone slab. The pit, which measured around 6.5 feet (2 meters) long and 2.5 feet (0.75 m) wide, intersected the Neolithic burial ditch at a right angle. Although excavators initially assumed it was yet another grave, the pit kept going and became a tunnel system known in German as an "erdstall," which means "earth tunnel" or "shaft."
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