The Stone Circle B at Isedōtai site looks nothing like a proper circle-- it’s completely crooked and distorted. If they wanted to construct a perfect circle they easily could’ve done so, as is evidenced from the other stone circles constructed around the same time. This leads us to believe that the imperfections here were intentional, but why would they do that?

It’s said that the stone circles at the Isedōtai site took about 200 years to build. Little by little, year by year, they constructed and added to the circle. There’s a theory the reason it took so long was that the project included multiple villages and they each had their own “portion” of the stone circle to work on. In other words, since the plan of each part of the circle was different depending on the village assigned to it, it took a long time to finish and the product of each section is different, resulting in a distorted shape.

But even if that theory is correct, the Stone Circle B looks too unfinished-- it’s not even a semi-circle. So that leads us to yet another theory, that maybe they were more interested in the process of making the stone circle, rather than a finished result. Meaning that the act of placing a stone in the circle had more meaning than completing a circle, and it’s possible that the Jomon people never actually intended to finish and create a full circle. That’s the theory, anyway.

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