Zorats Karer, the "Armenian Stonehenge" near Sisian: what it really is, what archaeologists say, what the legend says and how to visit
On the plateau next to Sisian, at 1,770 metres, with the wind of southern Armenia and the yellow grass, 223 black basalt stones stand driven into the ground, from half a metre to three metres high, and about eighty of them have a round hole the size of a fist drilled near the top. These are the Zorats Karer, the army stones, officially called Karahunj since 2004 and in the brochures the Armenian Stonehenge, a 7,500-year-old observatory older than the English one, according to a version that has gone round the world and that archaeologists do not share. It is worth seeing all the same: it is a strange, quiet, beautiful place, above all at dawn. This guide tells what is there, what is known, what is said and how to go.
What is there
The group covers some seven hectares and has a shape best seen from the air: a central oval circle about forty metres across made of forty stones, with a stone cairn in the middle; from it run two arms, one north and one south, of aligned stones, and a third to the north-east, making up the 223 that remain standing or fallen. The stones are local basalt, unworked except for the holes, which measure four or five centimetres and are found in about eighty of them, at different heights and orientations. Around them are cist graves, slab chambers below ground, which are what archaeologists have excavated. There are no fences or signs in the way: you walk among the stones, and the landscape, with Mount Ishkhanasar in the background, is part of the site.
What archaeologists say and what the legend says
The legend was written by Paris Herouni, an Armenian radiophysicist who in the 1990s measured the holes, related them to sunrises at solstices and equinoxes and to stars, and concluded that the group was an observatory from around 5500 BC, two thousand years older than Stonehenge; from his book came the name Karahunj, adopted by government decree in 2004 by analogy with the English one and with an etymology, speaking stones, that linguists do not endorse, and the agencies' posters. Archaeologists see something else: the excavations by the Institute of Archaeology of Armenia with the University of Munich in 2000 dated the group to the Middle Bronze Age and the Iron Age, between the second and first millennium BC, as a necropolis with a fortified settlement beside it, and for the holes everything from tethering cattle to holding posts has been proposed, with no astronomical alignment standing up to serious checking. Stonehenge dates from between 3000 and 2000 BC, so the claim of being older does not hold. What is true is that it is a three-thousand-year-old place nobody has fully explained, and that is already enough.
How to visit
It is 3 km from Sisian, in Syunik, some 200 km from Yerevan by the southern road, three and a half hours by car over the Selim pass or via Yeghegnadzor, and 40 km from Goris, the logical base for two or three days in the area. You get there by car or taxi from Sisian along a short track, there is a small visitor centre with a café and entry has been free, with a small charge in season worth asking about. The best time is dawn or the last hour of the afternoon, when the long shadows of the stones show on the grass and there are no coaches; at midday, with the sun high, it is a field of black stones and little more. An hour and a half is plenty, and in Sisian there is a small museum with finds from the graves.
What to see nearby
Five kilometres from Sisian is the Shaki waterfall, 18 metres high, with a reservoir that sometimes leaves it dry; in the town, the 7th-century church of Sisavan, up high with views; and on Mount Ughtasar, at 3,300 metres, thousands of five-thousand-year-old petroglyphs of goats and hunters, reached only by 4x4 from July to September. From Sisian you carry on to Tatev and its cable car, to Goris and to Khndzoresk, the cave village, which are the rest of the journey through southern Armenia.
Frequently asked questions
Why is it called the Armenian Stonehenge?
Because of Paris Herouni's book of the 1990s, which presented it as a 5500 BC observatory and gave it the name Karahunj in imitation of Stonehenge, a name the government made official in 2004; the holed stones and the central circle help the comparison. Archaeologists date the group to the second and first millennium BC and see it as a necropolis, so the resemblance is one of name more than history.
How many stones are there?
About 223 standing or fallen, from half a metre to three metres high and of local black basalt, some forty in the central circle and the rest in the arms running from it; about eighty have the four or five centimetre hole near the top that gave rise to the observatory hypothesis.
Is it a World Heritage site?
No, and there is no record of it being on Armenia's tentative list; it is an archaeological monument protected by the state, with a small visitor centre and excavations in the surrounding graves. Armenia's sites on the UNESCO list are Haghpat and Sanahin, Geghard and Etchmiadzin with Zvartnots.
