Anthropology
Related: About this forumThese mysterious stone structures in Saudi Arabia are older than the pyramids
Thousands of monumental structures built from walls of rock in Saudi Arabia are older than Egypt's pyramids and the ancient stone circles of Britain, researchers say making them perhaps the earliest ritual landscape ever identified.
A study published Thursday in the journal Antiquity shows that the mysterious structures dotted around the desert in northwestern Saudi Arabia called "mustatils" from the Arabic word for "rectangle" are about 7,000 years old. Thats much older than expected, and about 2,000 years older than either Stonehenge in England or the oldest Egyptian pyramid.
We think of them as a monumental landscape, said Melissa Kennedy, an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth and an author of the study. We are talking about over 1,000 mustatils. These things are found over 200,000 square kilometers [77,000 square miles], and theyre all very similar in shape.
They show that this part of the world is far from the eternal empty desert that people often imagine, but rather somewhere that remarkable human cultural developments have taken place said archaeologist Huw Groucutt of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History at Jena in Germany.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/mysterious-stone-structures-saudi-arabia-are-older-pyramids-rcna805
Researchers are documenting the muscatils and other ancient rock constructions by satellite
photographs, helicopter reconnaissance and ground surveys.
Bernardo de La Paz
(50,945 posts)Ford_Prefect
(8,202 posts)Could there be more than a little similarity here?
One must ask these questions...
Of course that would mean...........
left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)Ford_Prefect
(8,202 posts)Humans have borrowed symbols across cultures for ages. What makes you so certain there is NO possible link?
Personally I find the possibility encouraging and at the very least amusing.
😀
left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)DBoon
(23,068 posts)Was it "eternal empty desert" or was it more habitable?
left-of-center2012
(34,195 posts)Northern Arabia 7,000 years ago was very different to today. Rainfall was higher, so much of the area was covered by grassland and there were scattered lakes.
Pastoralist groups thrived in this environment, yet it would have been a challenging place to live, with droughts a constant risk.
Vast stone monuments constructed in Arabia 7,000 years ago
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200825113618.htm#:~:text=Northern%20Arabia%207%2C000%20years%20ago,with%20droughts%20a%20constant%20risk.
DBoon
(23,068 posts)A site I can view while keeping ad-blocker on.
niyad
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(42,862 posts)ashredux
(2,698 posts)packman
(16,296 posts)Worried2020
(444 posts).
hmmmmmmmmm. . .
W