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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday October 24 2017, @03:14PM   Printer-friendly
from the don't-leave-the-gate-open dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 24 2017, @07:11PM (1 child)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday October 24 2017, @07:11PM (#587015) Journal

    It could be anything. The Arabian Peninsula is a desolate waste now, but 11,000 years ago it was much wetter and greener. There was an article about it last year. I think it was this one [insidescience.org].

    They found rock art that depicted animals that inhabit savanna, which indicates that's what existed there, then. The stone structures, whatever their function, lend more evidence to that conclusion of a gentler climate.

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  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:30AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 25 2017, @06:30AM (#587298) Homepage

    To me they look like sorting pens for sheep, which probably doubled as protected crop space when the sheep were turned out in the spring.

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