Hundreds of Mysterious Stone 'Gates' Found in Saudi Arabia's Desert
Google Earth has unlocked the gates to ancient mysteries around the world.
For years, amateur and professional archaeologists have used the search engine's satellite imagery to discover mysterious earthworks in Kazakhstan, Roman ruins, a forgotten fortress in Afghanistan and more. In the past decade, Google Earth also has helped identify thousands of burial sites and other "works of the old men," as they're called, scattered across Saudi Arabia.
Now, archaeologists have uncovered nearly 400 previously undocumented stone structures they call "gates" in the Arabian desert that they believe may have been built by nomadic tribes thousands of years ago.
"We tend to think of Saudi Arabia as desert, but in practice there's a huge archaeological treasure trove out there and it needs to be identified and mapped," said David Kennedy, an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia and author of a paper set to appear in the November issue of the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy.
"You can't see them very well from the ground level, but once you get up a few hundred feet, or with a satellite even higher, they stand out beautifully."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday October 24 2017, @04:52PM (6 children)
I don't know why submitters put in links into the blockquote that weren't there originally. I have moved it outside of the blockquote
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(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday October 24 2017, @05:05PM (3 children)
Just my mistake I think. Normally it would be outside the blockquote. Sorry about that, but that's why I appreciate the eds around here :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday October 24 2017, @05:17PM (2 children)
I don't think you are the main offender, and it ought to be caught beforehand by editors but it isn't really discussed. Could even be considered OCD on my part.
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:11AM (1 child)
I am the main offender.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday October 25 2017, @12:35AM
I was trying to be polite!
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 24 2017, @06:53PM (1 child)
I do that because Slashdot did that. Often they used the hyperlink as a device to draw the eye to a particular phrase or sentence in the excerpt to highlight the topic or emphasize something else.
Also, copy & paste is the fastest way to construct a submission and the best way to keep the story pipeline full. If people who don't submit stories but complain about matters like these insist submitters re-process what the story has already composed, then submissions will instantly dry up because that takes too long, and nobody will thank you for the effort if your submission has any typos or you get something wrong.
Some in the community seem to think SN is a newspaper like the NY Times or a news agency like the BBC, and is bound by the journalistic and editorial conventions of those parties. It's not. So they should not grouse that SN does not meet those expectations, because they will be perpetually disappointed.
If the people who dislike how stories hit the front page now dislike it so much, then perhaps they should volunteer some of their time on the back-end to make the story source a separate field in the submission form and in the DB such that it no longer says, "[submitter] writes:" but instead "From the [BBC]:"
In other words, let them put their money where their mouth is.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @03:32AM
There's ample opportunity to do that in the headline, or by writing a remark of one's own.
While there's nothing wrong with emulating good practices from Slashdot, you seem to be telling us that Slashdot stopped doing that. If they stopped, maybe they realized it's not a good practice. If you admire them and want to emulate them, let the fact that they stopped be a reason for you to stop.
It is indeed, and when copying and pasting several paragraphs of others' work, we ought to clearly indicate whose work it is. And when we quote something but make changes to it beyond correcting minor typos, we ought to clearly indicate what those changes are.
That's a false assumption, because I do submit stories. So I know how much effort it takes to clearly identify the article. I always make it clear, and I don't find it a hardship at all.
When you tack a link to the source article onto arbitrary words within a quote, you are altering it.
Are you accustomed to getting praise for your submissions? Mine have received very little, and I see few comments praising anyone's.
I wish that it would attain the standard to which high school students are held. You're the most prolific submitter (at least, going by the stories that have been accepted) and I am indeed constantly disappointed by your misleading quoting style.
Because you can't be bothered to type "From the BBC" or "I saw this on the New York Times website", "source", "src" or the like? Then please, just put in a bare link, or use one of the bots to submit it, either of which takes less effort that what you've been doing. You could attribute your quotations clearly without any additional effort on your part.
The way you're doing these submissions requires more effort from the editors, should they wish to change it to a normal style of quoting. If the editors don't bother to do so, your style causes needless confusion to the readers. I'm not the first to point this out to you. I find it annoying, akin to the commenters who always post in monospace or who bring up Nazism or Donald Trump in unrelated discussions. Annoyed readers have asked them to stop, but they persist. I'm pleased by the responses of edIII and takyon.