Stone Engravings of Mysterious Ancient Megastructures May Be World's Oldest 'Blueprints'

Stone engravings of ancient megastructures called desert kites may be the earliest “blueprints” ever discovered

By Tom Metcalfe on May 17, 2023



Aerial view of a desert kite from Jebel az-Zilliyat, Saudi Arabia. Credit: O. Barge, CNRS

Archaeologists have unearthed ancient stone engravings of vast animal traps in Jordan and Saudi Arabia that are possibly the earliest “blueprints” ever discovered.

The engravings, estimated to be about 7,000 to 8,000 years old, are precise plans for nearby structures archaeologists call “desert kites”—converging lines of piled stones that were probably used to drive wild herds of gazelles and antelopes into pits at their corners.

Regardless of the structures’ purpose, the newly found plans show an understanding of the enormous kites—often larger than two football fields—that wouldn’t be equaled for millennia, says Rémy Crassard, an archaeologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and co-lead author of a study published May 17 in PLOS ONE. Even today, the kites can be fully appreciated only by viewing them from the air.

“The amazing discovery is that the plans are to scale,” Crassard says. They show a sophisticated approach to the kites “constrained by shape, by symmetry and by dimensions,” he adds. “We had no idea that people at that time were able to do that with such accuracy.”

More:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-oldest-plans-to-scale-of-humanmade-mega-structures/