Thousands of 9000 year old giant 'kites' are scattered throughout the Middle East

At the end of 2017, there are about 400 stretched stone architectures, some of them the size of a few football fields, that have been found in non-living areas in Saudi Arabia. It is called Harrat Khaybar, one of the volcanic copper areas scattered across the Arabian Peninsula.

The identification of these architectures called "gates" , some of which may be up to 9,000 years old, have created large coverage on the media. According to the New York Times: " Google Earth has unlocked the gate to ancient mysteries around the world "; With recently discovered structures, most of which are identified through satellite imagery, give us the latest example of the power of archeology from above.

However, these gates are just a chapter of a long story, involving wildlife, climate change, volcanic eruptions and a group of unknown people. Michael Petraglia, professor of human history and evolution at Max Planck's Humanities History Institute, affirmed "these structures appear throughout the Middle East".

This is not the only remarkable ancient architecture in the region. There are other giant stone structures, about the same size as the famous Nazca lines in the Andes, called "kites" .

The Harrat Khaybar area looks from the Expedition 16 crew on the International Space Station in March 2008.

From aerial surveys, satellite imagery and reports of surface researchers, we are told that there are thousands of "kite wings" across the Arabian Peninsula , and even as far away as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Over time, people gradually discovered the origin of "kites" that were noisy at thousands of years of ancient human history, but there are still three big questions that need to be answered: They are used What to do, how many years is it for, and who built them?

Although these works have been mentioned by people who still live in the area, one of the first official records is known by Lieutenant Percy Maitland from the Royal British Air Force, who happened to be by accident saw them a few years after the end of World War I.

By the 1920s, Britain and France signed an agreement to divide the Middle East. During this period, the Royal Air Force continued to fly between Baghdad and Cairo to measure, map the area and deliver mail.

In an aerial surveillance report from 1927, Maitland described seeing stone walls: they lined long or scattered rows, some of which were circular, about 120 miles east of Dead Sea in the old lava fields. The Bedu, a nomadic Arab group, called them "The Works of the Ancient People".

Lieutenant Maitland said that "These architectures are complex and confusing." According to the Arabs, they are from the pre-Islamic period and "take the form of ancient times". The Royal Air Force called this architecture "kite wings" because when viewed from above, the giant structure looked like kites.

The Globalkites work at a "kite wing".

Over time, archaeologists began to approach and understand these mysterious architectures. It is clear that they are of all shapes and sizes, and are often found with artifacts, pictures of cattle carved in stone to stone tools. Among them are pyramidal stone mounds, like the burial place of the dead. Professor Petraglia explained that it takes a lot of time and effort to create these architectures, affirming "they have tremendous value" and these kites "give you the feeling that they are public submission of a collection of people ".

Remy Crassard, an archaeologist at the French Center for Archeology and Social Sciences in Kuwait, explained that in the 1990s, it was estimated that there were only a few hundred "kites" . Now, we know that that number has reached 6,000, scattered from Saudi Arabia to the Sinai Peninsula. This is not only due to satellite surveys, but also initiatives such as the Globalkites project, with Crassard as the leader, studying these architectures with satellite images and field access. .

Research shows that these works are concentrated in Syria and Jordan, the Fertile Crescent (which is a crescent-shaped land, now including Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Egypt, southeastern Turkey and western Iran) fertile wet land and dense vegetation where early agriculture and civilization flourished. The density of kites decreases gradually when entering Armenia and Turkey, through Central Asia, scientists are still trying to understand this change.

The chronology of these architectures is still a mystery, but there are promising clues thanks to volcanic activity. Károly Throweth, assistant professor of geology at Massey University of New Zealand, explained that geological activities create cracks and promote the activity of many volcanoes in the Middle East region, creating many fields. Lava, where kites appear.

A "kite wing" seen from above.

Today, seen from space, fields of lava are like the surface of Mars. The surface is concave with hills formed by volcanic eruptions, volcanic cones, lava lakes and craters. Various geochemical components have made these areas where black and elsewhere are almost white.

Some volcanic lava fields were 30 million years ago, long before humans first appeared. In contrast, in the mysterious Harrat Khaybar area , lava still flows until 1,000 years ago. Archaeological evidence shows that humans live with later eruptions, some lava flows are found above these works. That proves that we can determine the date of one of them.

Top of volcanic cones and lava flows.

Based on this clue, Crassard and his colleagues are investigating further in the hope of finding the correct date. They dug around one of several craters found in these architectures and discovered many animal corpses.

Using a variety of dating methods, they found that some "kite wings" in Jordan date from the Neolithic period, possibly as early as 9,000 years ago. They are much older than we expected, Crassard explains. He added that the "kites" farther away from the Fertile Crescent are lower.

Volcanic terrain is eroded over time by wind and rain.

What remains in the hole can tell us the effect of kites. In Saudi Arabia, the Crassard group found the remains of the Gazelle, in Armenia, with remains of donkeys and goats; in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan they found the remains of the saiga antelope. They suspected that these structures were built by hunters to hunt and confine animals, and when they were trapped in those pits, they could not escape and were killed.

This idea was put forward by other researchers, based on other archaeological evidence. For example, these structures in Jordan seem to be built in a way that prevents the migration of animals to Syria. In addition, explorer John Burckhardt who witnessed an antelope hunt in Syria wrote in a book in 1831; Hundreds of hunters chase antelopes running into these buildings. It is also possible that this is the place to confine animals like we do in today's farms.

However, Professor Petraglia also noted that not all of these architectures have the same shape, some are shaped like kites, as others have quite different shapes. Crassard also noted similarly, his Globalkites used statistical and mathematical models to chart similarities and differences of these works. Climate change may be the cause of the difference in shape and size of these buildings.

Professor Petraglia is a member of the Palaeodeserts project, a research project on environmental change in the Arabian desert for a million years. He explained that from 10,000 to 6,000 years ago, humans lived in the early stages of the Holocene, which once had many oases. It was wetter, a time marked by more rainfall, many lakes and according to Professor Petraglia " there is a network of rivers in Arab carving ". Plants appear throughout the region, agriculture and animal husbandry develop. " This is a resource-rich environment ," he added.

The purpose of building these structures may have changed over time as people have to adapt to changing environments.

Hugo Murcia, a geologist at Caldas University in Colombia, notes that the volcanic debris left here clearly shows magma interacting with water. A clear sign that there are rivers that flow here. Price Professor Petraglia added, " You can imagine how beautiful these volcanoes are during the wet period, with the rivers and plants and animals around them ."

Significantly, archaeological works have previously revealed that these "kites" are dated at least as long as the transition from this wet period to the modern super-arid period. It also shows that the purpose of building these buildings may have changed over time as people have to adapt to changing environments , but now, it is difficult to say more about it.

However, this finding did not help us in finding out who was the first to build kites. We think that people disappear when the area is deserted - this is a big mistake, Petraglia emphasizes the fact that people still live in the Arabian desert but the identity of the "Ancient People" Maitland once mentioned is still a mystery.

Underground lava tubes, caves formed by lava flows, are present throughout the region and Petraglia suggests that human remains can be found in one of them. These potential tombs will be unearthed for the first time by Petraglia and his colleagues in early 2019, which may shed light on the archaeological gaps here.

When asked who was present with the oldest "kites" , Crassard said that perhaps they were nomads, they had come to these arid areas when the prey of the cave animals migrate through the area. Also, hunters may have lived there. " We don't really have any clear clues, " he added.

The "gates" may even appear before "kites" : Although they are still separate from each other, there is at least one case of a kite wing stacked up on the gate. Like "kites", the "gates" are clearly visible from space; They were originally discovered by the Desert Team, a group of Saudi amateur archaeologists, via satellite images.

A "kite wing" seen from above, the photo was taken from a camera balloon

Later, this work was followed by David Kennedy, a professor of archeology at the University of Western Australia, who wrote in a November 2017 article that the gates were found on desolate lava fields. , there are no humans and plants and animals living.

Huw Groucutt, a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford University's School of Archeology, described the gates as "very interesting and strange" . He said that he could not see any clear purpose for the purpose of building them, maybe they were the place of ceremonial activities of some sort, but he eventually added "Nobody knows they use for what purpose ".

The only way to study "gates" and "kites" is to conduct field research and be more systematic than all of them. "This area is one of the most amazing archaeological, volcanic and cultural sites in the world," said Throweth , "It has not been studied much."

Professor Petraglia said that there have been significant advances in the study of "kite wings" that have been carried out over the past few decades, but compared to hundreds of archaeological research efforts taking place in Europe each days, the work done in Saudi Arabia is not significant. " The media may want to call these structures a mystery, but that's just because archaeologists haven't done their work yet ," he added.