Ancient people used scale to build gigantic structures
Stone Age people developed massive plans to build mysterious megastructures. Archaeologists working in Saudi Arabia and Jordan say they have discovered the oldest known architectural plans.
According to a new study published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS One, «extremely accurate images» etched into stone slabs detail huge structures used to herd wild animals such as gazelles into enclosures where they could slaughter entire herds.
As reported by CNN, Stone Age hunting traps date back to around 9,000 years and are known as kites because of their shape. Ancient traps were first discovered in the deserts of the Middle East in the 1920s by aircraft pilots who noticed the striking landscape shapes.
Long converging walls, ranging in length from hundreds of meters to 5 kilometers, made it possible to drive animals into a large paddock surrounded by many holes up to 4 meters deep. Some of the desert structures, known as «desert kites» because of their shape, were the largest structures built at the time they were built in human history.
“These structures are so big. When you are on the spot, in the field, it is difficult to understand how they are built, what is the layout and shape,” says archaeologist Wael Abu Azizeh.
More than 6,000 prehistoric structures of this kind have been found throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, and they are most numerous in what is now northern Saudi Arabia, southern Syria, and eastern Jordan. However, this archaeological phenomenon has been little studied.
Accurate drawings of massive structures suggested that the people who built and used the traps had advanced and sophisticated knowledge of the perceived space and were able to process complex spatial information.
“In terms of cognitive development, this is absolutely, absolutely amazing”, scientists say.
In a recent study, archaeologists reported the discovery of two engraved slabs found in 2015 in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Abu Azizeh is part of a team that unearthed one of the artifacts in a former settlement in the Jibal al-Khashabiya area in Jordan, where eight ancient hunting pens are located.
He said that «within a few seconds» realized that the markings made on the 80 cm long stone, which is believed to be 7000 years old, depict a nearby megastructure.
His colleagues in Saudi Arabia unearthed a larger engraved stone in the Jabal al-Zilliyat area , the length of which was almost 4 meters. The slab depicted two different structures that were only 120 meters apart. It is believed that the engraving was made 8000 years ago.
The study showed that the shape, location and proportions of the engraving corresponded to the real remains of the structures. The images also corresponded to the cardinal directions — north, east, south and west. The engraving, found in Saudi Arabia, was made at a scale of approximately 1:175, which means that the real «desert kites» were 175 times more than on the plan. «Kite» in Jordan was 425 times larger than schematically depicted on another slab found.
“The engraving is surprisingly realistic and accurate, and in addition, it is made to scale”, the study says.
The only exception was the oversized image of deep holes — circles on stones, — where the animals must have been sent before slaughter. Abu Azizeh says they would be barely visible if reproduced to scale, and the exaggerated size may have indicated the importance of the pits as places where animals were actually killed.
While in Europe, there are older carvings believed to be maps, and other, cruder «kite» pictures have been found. for hunting, these two engraved slabs turned out to be the oldest known drawings made to scale. Not much is known about the people who made the ancient structures, which was probably a serious undertaking requiring the collective effort and investment of a large group. «Kites», which were sometimes arranged in chains, allowed ancient communities to hunt large numbers of animals at once.