BRITISH archaeologists using declassified spy photography have uncovered Hadrian era Roman fortifications in Romania ... the Empire's eastern frontier equivalent of Hadrian's Wall on the northern frontier.
Calling it "the lost Roman Eastern frontier," researchers from the Universities of Glasgow and Exeter identified a long wall that ran 60 kilometers from the Danube to the Black Sea.
Although parts of the wall were previously known about, they were wrongly thought to date to the Byzantine or Early medieval period.
However announcing the discovery this week, the archaeologists said the wall, known locally as Trajan's Rampart, was actually built by Trajan's successor Hadrian or later Antonine Emperors in the mid-2nd Century AD.
It once resembled Hadrian's Wall in Britain ... a low fortification meant primarily to impede cross-border smuggling traffic, and only secondarily as a barrier to invasion. It was 8.5 meters wide and over 3.5 meters high and included at least 32 forts and 31 smaller fortlets along its course.
Actually it consisted of three separate walls of different dates; the "Small Earthen Wall," the "Large Earthen Wall" and the "Stone Wall."
Bill Hanson, Professor of Roman Archaeology from the University of Glasgow, said the "important discovery" was the most easterly example of a man-made frontier barrier system in the Roman Empire.
"We believe we have enough evidence here to demonstrate the existence of a chronologically complex Roman frontier system, and the most easterly example of a man-made barrier in the Roman Empire, serving to block an important and strategically valuable routeway," Hanson said.
“It is an incredibly important discovery for the study of Roman history.”
In what could begin a new era for archaeologists, declassified photographs taken during covert satellite surveillance are allowing researchers to study millions of sites from around the world, potentially leading to thousands of new archaeological discoveries.
Tens of millions of images of Europe and the Middle East were taken by Allied and German air forces during the First and Second World Wars and are now held in vast public archives.
Pretty funny...if the British researchers would have had the common sense to ask any peasant living in the area they would have found out that here everybody knows about this wall from...well...the moment it was built!....but ...they are British so they were conditioned through educational system to never ask questions but presume...since they are graduates of the.."best educational system in the world"
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