Researchers of the Round Table

Researchers from the US and UK are teaming up to perform the first-ever archaeological excavation of a 5,000-year-old tomb believed to be connected to the legend of King Arthur.

⚔️🤺 More deets… The site, located in Herefordshire, England, is known as “Arthur’s Stone.” It’s believed to date back to between 3,700 B.C. and 2,700 B.C. – but history is far from clear.

• Some legends from before the 13th century suggest the tomb was built to mark the location of one of King Arthur's battles.
• Others say the site was the location where Arthur slew a giant that fell, leaving an indentation still seen today.

📚 Big picture: Whether the legendary King Arthur actually existed is the subject of much debate among historians, though his story is widely considered one of the most enduring of all time.

Per the British Library’s Hetta Elizabeth Howes, historical records show a man named Arthur leading a resistance against the Saxons around the fifth and sixth centuries, while some Welsh accounts reference a similarly gifted warlord.

• The glorified king and his Knights of the Round Table first began to take shape in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (circa ~1136), which was widely popular in its day but is now considered historically unreliable.

+In the know: The soon-to-be-excavated site is also believed to have been portrayed in a pivotal scene in C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia series. (*SPOILER ALERT*: The scene in question is the one where Aslan the Lion is sacrificed on a stone slab by the White Witch.)