It was older than the ancient Roman Empire by at least five centuries.

The hilltop fortress near the Armenian town of Gagarat was discovered in 2015 by a pair

of American archaeologists, but it was more than a series of walls and cellar holes.

This ruined fortress was home to a number of buildings, and each one served a specific

purpose.

There was a workshop for crafting stone tools, another for working with metal, and others

that seemed to serve as official quarters with idols and royal seals found in the ground.

There was even a small mill for grinding flour.

But that wasn't the key feature of the fortress.

No, what set it apart and drew the attention of historians was the presence of three unique

shrines.

One seemed to have all the telltale signs of osteomancy, the practice of using animal

bones to seek the will of the gods.

Another hinted at lithomancy, the same sort of practice only using stones instead of bones.

And the final building apparently served the same purpose just with flour.

They were divination shrines, places where the inhabitants of the fortress, or perhaps

just the rulers of the community there, might seek answers from the divine in order to

make informed decisions about their future.

And they are an early example of a practice that can be found in just about every ancient

culture around the world.

When our ancestors needed answers and didn't know where to turn, they looked to the realms

beyond our own.

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