Huge prehistoric stone structures found in desert landscapes from Saudi Arabia to Kazakhstan have puzzled archaeologists for decades. Each can extend for a few kilometers and is shaped like a comet with tails. Recent studies have reached a consensus that the so-called desert kites were used to trap and kill herds of wild animals. But how ancient hunters conceived of—and perceived—these structures remains a mystery.
In their entirety, the kites “are only visible from the air,” said Rémy Crassard, an archaeologist at France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “Even with our modern ways of visualizing our landscape, it is difficult for us archaeologists, scientists and academics to make an accurate map.”
In 2015, Crassard and his colleagues found two stone monoliths with accurate representations of nearby desert kites in Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Recorded between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago, these renderings are by far the oldest known scaled architectural plans recorded in human history, the team recently reported in PLOS One. They also highlight just how carefully planned the kites may have been. of the desert by the ancient peoples.
“It’s amazing to know and show that they were capable of this mental conceptualization of very large spaces and putting that on a smaller surface,” Crassard said.
Over the past decade, as part of a project called Global-kites, Crassard and his colleagues have used satellite imagery to identify more than 6,000 desert kites in the Middle East and western and central Asia. Other researchers have discovered stone carvings depicting these enigmas during surveys and excavations. But Crassard said the researchers were unable to link the previously found engravings to a specific kite.
When archaeologists found the two kite depictions in southeastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia during field surveys, they knew the carvings were special.
The team noted three defining characteristics of the kite. There were “tail threads”, which represent more or less contiguous lines of stones. These converge in a walled pen that resembles the “body” of the kite. And along the edges of the body, pits had been dug. Archaeologists suspect that groups of animals such as gazelles followed or were chased along these stone lines before being funneled into the fold, where hunters killed the animals and used the strategically placed pits to trap those trying to escape. .
The team quickly recognized that these etchings matched the shape and structure of nearby comets. In southeastern Jordan, the tail lines of kites curve when they converge on folds, a peculiarity visible in the engraved stone.
“When we look at the satellite and aerial images we took in the field, it’s like a picture of the actual kites in this area,” said Mohammad Tarawneh, an archaeologist at Al-Hussein Bin Talal University in Jordan and an author on the study.
The mathematical models also indicated that kites in the Jordanian-Saudi region were the best match when the researchers compared the geometry of the two engravings with 69 kites from a variety of regions. Shape comparisons with nearby comets also revealed that the depictions were to scale.
What remains unknown is whether these representations were blueprints to aid in the construction of kites or served as maps for hunters. The carvings could also be symbolic commemorations of desert kites, which may have been an important part of the cultural identity of the peoples who made them, said Wael Abu-Azizeh, an archaeologist at the French Near East Institute in Jordan and an author on the study. .
PRIYANKA RUNWALL
THE NEW YORK TIMES
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6769409, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-06-20 21:00:07
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