SoylentNews

Hundreds of Mysterious Stone ‘Gates’ Found in Saudi Arabia’s Desert

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

edIII writes:

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."

---

Original Submission

• Re:article is on nytimes.com (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:57AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 25 2017, @04:57AM (#587269)

  FFS so volunteer your time on the back-end to capture the story source separately in the submission form, store it in the DB, and spit it out on the home page as, "From [story source]:" instead of "[submitter] writes:"

  No, because not every story follows, or should follow, that format. Some submissions are actually written by the submitter. Others link to multiple articles. If you seriously can't be bothered to type "From [story source]:" as you just did, maybe the story isn't worth submitting at all. But as I said, you needn't even type that. You can just provide a bare URL, and it will automatically be linked.

  If you care that much about it, put your money where your mouth is. If you don't pony up, then stick a cork in it. If you don't pony up, then stick a cork in it.

  Nobody pulled your chain. I remarked on edIII's story submission. You jumped in, in a bizarrely strident manner. I and others have brought this up with you before. I ceased doing so because you're obstinate. That doesn't make you right.

  Go back there and whine and whine and whine about how CmdrTaco and Hemos and Cowboy Neal suck and didn't follow journalistic conventions.

  They're long gone. You are not. Slashdot doesn't do that any more, and if it did, that wouldn't make it acceptable. And your strident remarks begin to lead me to believe that you like to irritate your readers. I and other submitters have no trouble indicating who we're quoting. There's no good reason to do otherwise, as evidenced by your comments in this thread. What about me, what about Slashdot? What I do, and what Slashdot does or used to do, is irrelevant. What you do may be pertinent. If you your unclear quoting style starts to be adopted by other submitters, it's pertinent. There are good reasons not to quote that way:

  • so readers will immediately see where they can read the entire article from which you quoted
  • so readers will immediately see what the source of the story is, helping them to decide how credible the story is
  • because it's ethical to give credit to the author of the quote
  • to avoid copyright infringement

  Your reasons for doing it seem to be:

  • because Slashdot used to do it
  • because I don't contribute enough code, money, or stories
  • because, somehow, you perceive it as an effort
  • because it irritates readers

  Your reasons are weak. Why defend the indefensible?

  Parent