Fascinating. I had no idea these existed.
In Saudi Arabia, he explored 200 sites from the air across the regions of Harrat Khaybar and Harrat Uwayrid. The structures he observed ranged in shapes and sizes, which he describes as gates, kites, triangles, bull’s eyes and keyholes. Over the course of three days, he snapped more than 6,000 aerial photographs, lifting the veil on the ancient wonders.
Of the 400 structures he describes as “gates” that he had identified on Google Earth, Dr. Kennedy studied about 40 from the helicopter and found that the structures were not randomly put together.
“We could see immediately they were much more complicated than they appeared on Google Earth,” Dr. Kennedy said. They were not simply heaps of stone. Rather, each long bar was actually made up of two parallel lines of flat slabs placed on their edges facing each other with small stones filling the space in between. “They are much more sophisticated than I was prepared for,” he said.
Some gates were larger than 1,000 feet long and 250 feet wide. He suspected the oldest may be about 9,000 years old. Though he is not sure of their purpose, he speculated they may have been used for farming purposes.
From above, they typically resemble kites with strings and tails. They are often very large, with many stretching more than a quarter-mile. Archaeologists think gazelle were corralled into the head of the kite, where the hunters would come out to kill them. Sometimes multiple kites would overlap, so that if the animals got past one funnel they would get caught in another. “Essentially there was no escape,” said Dr. Kennedy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/17/science/saudi-arabia-gates.html?rref=collection/sectioncollection/science&action=click&contentCollection=science®ion=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront
I am impressed that the first theory is not “probably religious.”
ReplyDeleteNo mystery for this.
ReplyDeleteOkay, this first picture here is just a Bedouin camp. Ancient? Yes ...maybe. The round part of the keyhole is where they erect their circular tents. The rocks around the circular tent perimeter prevent sand from flying into the tent, and protect the skirt of the tent from being blown away during a sand storm or dust storm, and the rock wall also keeps the herd animals out of the tents.
The long triangular part of the rocks in this picture here is where the goats, sheep, camels, and whatnot are kept so they don't just run off into the desert. Some of these are still in use by Bedouins even today over near the empty Quarter, but overall they don't see much use anymore since most of the Bedouins have given up the nomadic life, and have been relocated, and now live in villages, towns, or cities. Not all of them, mind you. just most of them.
Each circle you see here is a tent for one family.
I'll look at the other photos in the article, and may provide some additional commentary on them as well. ...How do I know this? I lived in Saudi Arabia for the better part of a year about thirty years ago now ...and saw these in use, firsthand.
The Keyhole Pendants stone structures are all Bedouin camps, you can see the tent circle in each one of them. The Kite shaped stone structures are hunting and gathering traps. The way they work is like this;
ReplyDeleteAn entire Bedouin clan, or even several groups of clans gets together, then goes far out into the open desert. They then forms a parallel line with each member starting out up to 1,000 yards apart, separated. The entire line then begins moving in tandem making lots of noise and flushing out wild game, antelope, lizards, small mammals, desert lions ...well pretty much anything.
The line would then drive the panicked game towards the kite, and as they got closer, and closer to the kite, the walls of the kite came closer and closer together, so it got easier to keep the wild game corralled in, forming a chute for easy close range hunting.
Eventually all of the bedouin hunters would end up in the smallest angle at the end of a kite, in a killzone, where they would be able to finish off the panicked wildlife and score themselves some serious amounts of food. A small group of hunters would almost always be at the narrowest angle of the kite, waiting for the line to drive the game to them. They would also use the kites to gather any livestock that had escaped into the wild, in order to help them keep their herds robust
Usually, after they hunted once or twice, they would pack up their camps, and move on to another area. Hunter/gatherers, Eh?