15 July 2025 The Future is the Product of the Past

Australia’s 1,400-year-old Mysterious Earth Rings: Evidence of Millennia of Human Effort, Not Natural Formation

A chain of mysterious earth rings in the Sunbury hills at the fringe of Melbourne, in Australia have been found to be not a natural formation, but an evidence of millennia of human effort.

The Sunbury suburb’s Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country is home to these “earth rings,” which are not naturally occurring. They are actually enormous achievements of human endeavor. They also symbolize the Aboriginal people’s long-standing and continuing ties to their homeland.

A new study integrates the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung knowledge with the first archaeological excavation of one of the rings. This accomplishment adds to our understanding of Australia’s archaeological heritage, which spans more than 65,000 years of ongoing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander habitation.

These amazing earthworks, which are now regarded as artifacts of great cultural significance, were made between 590 and 1,400 years ago by the Aboriginal Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people. They did so by excavating and heaping together earth in a large circle (or circles) measuring up to hundreds of metres in diameter The most recent article in Australian Archaeology showed fresh insights into their meaning and construction.

These earth rings are not isolated phenomena; similar formations have been found globally, including in England and Cambodia. Earth rings are considered sacred ceremonial sites for Aboriginal language groups in eastern Australia. However, as a result of European colonization and land development, many of these rings were destroyed. There used to be hundreds of them in Queensland and New South Wales, but now there are only 100. There have been reports of five earth rings, including the Sunbury rings, in Victoria.

However, the Sunbury rings are uniquely Australian, representing profound connections to the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung’s cultural landscape, or “biik wurrdha,” which encompasses land, water, sky, and ancestral traditions.

Details of refit sets identified in the Sunbury Ring G artifacts. Credit: Caroline Spry et al., Australian Archaeology (2025)
Details of refit sets identified in the Sunbury Ring G artifacts. Credit: Caroline Spry et al., Australian Archaeology (2025)

The Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung conducted a cultural values study of the region encompassing the Sunbury rings during 2021-2022. Also in 2022, the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people performed an archaeological dig at Sunbury Ring G, a place of cultural and ceremonial significance.

Archaeologist David Frankel previously excavated this site in 1979, as well as the area where the Wurundjeri Wilam and Marin Bulluk clans were divided by Jacksons Creek from one another. This new research involved the examination of 166 stone artifacts. In the process of reconstructing the artifacts, the deposits were dated.  All of this brought to light the methods and tools used by the people of Woi-Wurrung.

The team pieced together the way Woi-wurrung-speaking people lived and interacted in these areas using advanced dates and artifact analyses. They prepared plants and animals, made and used stone tools, made decoration out of feathers, lit campfires, and performed rituals such as scarifying human skin. The tools’ wear patterns and residue offer concrete proof of these activities.

The archaeological and cultural interpretation of Australian earth rings is woven together in this first-of-its-kind research. It shows how crucial those sites are and the threats they endure due to land use and climate change developments.

Spry, C., Freedman, D. L., Hayes, E., Hitchcock, G., Morrison, W., … Mullins, B. (2025). New braided knowledge understandings of an Aboriginal earth ring and biik wurrdha (Jacksons Creek, Sunbury) on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country, southeastern Australia. Australian Archaeology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/03122417.2024.2428019

Cover Image Credit: Aerial image of Sunbury Ring G. Credit: Caroline Spry et al., Australian Archaeology (2025)

Related Articles

Artificial intelligence is Detecting New Archaeological Sites in the Arabian desert

5 October 2024

5 October 2024

A team of researchers at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi has developed a machine-learning algorithm to help them trawl vast...

Researchers Discovered Wreckage of a Schooner that Sank in Lake Michigan in Late 1800s

27 July 2024

27 July 2024

Maritime historians from the Wisconsin Underwater Archeology Association discovered the wreckage of a schooner that sank in Lake Michigan in...

Metal Scraps were Used İnstead of Money in Bronze Age Europe

8 May 2021

8 May 2021

Bronze scrap uncovered in hoards in Europe was used as currency, according to researchers from the Universities of Göttingen and...

1,400-year-old temple from the time of the East Anglian Kings discovered at Suffolk royal settlement

21 November 2023

21 November 2023

Archaeologists have uncovered a possibly pre-Christian temple from the time of the East Anglian Kings at Rendlesham, near Sutton Hoo...

Karahantepe; It will radically change the way we look at the Neolithic Age

1 June 2022

1 June 2022

Findings on settled village life in the ongoing excavations in Karahantepe will profoundly change our knowledge of the Neolithic Age....

483 Celtic gold coins worth several million euros stolen from German museum

23 November 2022

23 November 2022

A huge horde of ancient gold coins dating back to 100 BC was stolen from the Celtic and Roman Museum...

Archaeological excavations unearthed the first great Iberian city in Contestania and the oldest one

11 May 2024

11 May 2024

Archaeologists from the University of Alicante and the University of Murcia “Damas y Héroes. In the project “Tras la Ilici...

10,000-year-old Settlement Discovered in Turkey’s Şanlıurfa

25 June 2021

25 June 2021

A Neolithic settlement was discovered in the garden of a house in the Sayburç Neighborhood of Şanlıurfa’s Karaköprü district. News...

3500-year-old menhir discovered in Mahbubabad, India

15 March 2022

15 March 2022

Six feet in height stone, also called a menhir, was found on the roadside of Ellarigudem, a hamlet of Beechrajupally...

Karahantepe will shed light on the mysteries of the Prehistoric period

7 October 2021

7 October 2021

Karahantepe’s ancient site, which is home to Neolithic-era T-shaped obelisks similar to the ones in the world-famous Göbeklitepe, will reveal...

200,000-year-old hand axe discovered in the northern part of Saudi Arabia

5 November 2023

5 November 2023

The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) of Saudi Arabia has announced that archeological excavation teams at the Qurh site in...

A New Late Ancient Necropolis Discovered on Hvar Island

10 June 2021

10 June 2021

The protective investigation in the garden of the Radoevi Palace in the town of Hvar on the Croatian island of...

2,000-Year-Old Iron Age and Roman Treasures Found in Wales Could Point to an Unknown Roman Settlement

12 May 2023

12 May 2023

A metal detectorist found a pile of exceptionally preserved Roman and Iron Age objects buried 2,000 years ago in a...

Unique Viking Age sword found in Norway

14 June 2022

14 June 2022

A piece of a sword was found last year on a farm in Gausel, in Stavanger, on Norway‘s west coast,...

The World’s Oldest Mummies “Chile’s Ancient Mummies Older than Egypt’s”

20 February 2024

20 February 2024

At the beginning of the 20th century, mummies dating back 2000 years before the Egyptians were found in the Atacama...