Ancient Arabia and Mideast from the Air: Mustalis, Desert Kites and Funerary Avenues | Middle East And North Africa

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8,500-YEAR-OLD WHEEL-SHAPED STONE STRUCTURES IN THE MIDDLE EAST

Mustalis visible on Google Earth

Thousands of stone structures are found throughout a wide area of the Middle East. Owen Jarus, wrote in Live Science: Pilots noticed the structures as early as World War I when, in 1927, RAF Flight Lieutenant Percy Maitland described the structures in a report published in the journal Antiquity. The Bedouin told him that they called the structures the "works of the old men," a name that is still used today by researchers. Much of the new research focuses on one type of structure known as "wheels" — circular stone structures that often have spokes radiating from the center. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, December 2, 2015]

Two wheels in the Black Desert of Jordan at a site called Wadi Wisad were dated using a technique called optically stimulated luminescence (osl). The dates indicate that both structures were built around 8,500 years ago. A massive meandering wall can also be seen in the distance. These walls are also called "works of the old men" and their purpose is unknown. At ground level it is difficult to see the patterns of the wheels although they become clear once you are airborne. Wheels are also located in the Azraq Oasis in Jordan. Researchers found that, statistically, the spokes of these wheels have a southeast-northwest orientation that may align with the sunrise during the winter solstice. Other wheels studied do not have this alignment.

In Saudi Arabia researchers have discovered "wheels" (if they can be called that) with patterns that are far different than what you see in Jordan. One wheel has a bull's-eye design. Three triangular structures are seen pointing to it. Rock piles can be seen extending from the triangles to the bull's-eye. The date and function of this site is unknown. Many triangular structures have been discovered in Saudi Arabia by a team with the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East (APAAME). Scientists don't know how far back the structure date nor do they know what their purpose may have been.

Mustalis — the Mysterious 7,000-Year-Old Stone Structures in Saudi Arabia

Over 1,600 huge, enigmatic rectangular complexes known as mustalis are scattered throughout the deserts of northwest Saudi Arabia. First observed in aerial surveys they date back to around 7,000 years ago. Mustali is the Arabic word for rectangle. Archaeology magazine reported: They are among the earliest known large-scale stone monuments found anywhere, predating even Egypt’s pyramids and Stonehenge. Scholars are unsure why they were constructed, but suggest they were used for religious ceremonies, since the remains of horned animals, especially cattle, are known to have been ritually deposited within them. [Source: Archaeology magazine, July 2021]

Live Science reported: While their appearance varies, they are usually rectangular in shape and often consisting of two platforms connected by two walls. Archaeological work indicates that some of the mustatils had a chamber in the center made of stone walls surrounding an open area with a standing stone in the center. The new research reinforces a theory proposed by other researchers that the mustatils had a ritualistic purpose and, in addition, provides evidence that they were part of a cattle cult. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, April 30, 2021]

Satellite image of a mustali in Saudi Arabia

"The mustatils of northwest Arabia represents the first large-scale, monumental ritual landscape anywhere in the world, predating Stonehenge by more than 2,500 years," Melissa Kennedy, assistant director of the Aerial Archaeology in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia project (AAKSA), said in a statement. "These structures can now be interpreted as ritual installations dating back to the late sixth millennium B.C., with recent excavations revealing the earliest evidence for [a] cattle cult in the Arabian Peninsula," a team of researchers wrote in a paper published April 30 in the journal Antiquity.

The team's research revealed "that these monuments are architecturally more complex than previously supposed, featuring chambers, entranceways and orthostats [upright stone slabs]," the team wrote in the article. Some of the mustatils have been looted or damaged but in 2019, the team was able to excavate a mustatil that was undisturbed.

The discovery of cattle bones and horns inside the mustatils adds to evidence that the environment in the region was wetter around 7,000 years ago than it is today. "The environment was certainly much more humid during this period, we know this from palaeoclimatological data gathered from across the Arabian Peninsula," Kennedy told Live Science.. "Cattle need a lot of water to survive, so by finding these amazingly well-preserved cattle horns in the mustatil we are starting to get a better understanding of what the Late Neolithic was like in this part of the Arabian Peninsula," Kennedy said.

Cattle Cult Rituals Held at the Mustalis

Mustalis appear to have fulfilled a religious function, serving as the sites of ritual sacrifices, according to a study published on March 15, 2023 in PLOS One. Archaeologists have found an undisturbed mustali chamber contained a large number of cattle bones and horns as well as remains from sheep, goat and gazelle. According to the Miami Herald: Both wild and domesticated animals seem to have been sacrificed at the mustatils. Researchers, who are affiliated with the University of Western Australia, said. “It looks like cattle, goats and gazelles were brought to the site, potentially slaughtered there and then presented to what is probably a stone representation of an unknown deity,” Dr. Melissa Kennedy, the lead researcher, said in the release. [Source: Brendan Rascius, Miami Herald, May 9, 2023]

The stone deity figure, around which most of the animal remains were clustered, was likely used as a “house of the god,” researchers said. Researchers came to this conclusion after excavating a roughly 460-foot-long mustatil near an ancient Arabian oasis, according to a university news release. Herding communities likely traveled on pilgrimages to visit the stone monuments, providing further evidence of their significance. “The revisiting and pilgrimage to these structures, like feasting, may have been crucial to maintaining socio-cultural and economic ties between families and wider community groups, brought together by this ritual activity,” researchers said.

According to Live Science: Animal bones were found in the center of a chamber —which was constructed with stone walls — beside a large upright stone, leading the team to believe that they were "offerings" from people participating in ritual activities associated with a cattle cult; this cult may have been dedicated to deities or supernatural forces associated with cattle. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, April 30, 2021]

Given that writing had not been invented at that time, researchers aren’t sure precisely the beliefs of such cattle cult followers. People may have made their way to the chamber through a procession. "The architecture of these mustatils suggests that their use involved an element of procession. Their narrow entranceways indicates that the structures were accessed in single file," the team wrote in the Antiquity article. The archaeologists also found rock art in the area and from the same time period that supports the idea that the mustatils were used as part of a cattle cult. The rock art shows "scenes of both cattle herding and hunting," the team wrote. The structures are so large and prominent in the landscape that a ritual function seems likely, the researchers said. In addition, the long walls are no higher than 1.6 feet (0.5 meters), meaning the structures couldn't have functioned as animal pens, they said. T

There are many more mysteries about the mustatils that remain to be solved. For instance, why were a few mustatils constructed on the slopes of volcanoes? "We are not quite sure why they were constructed on volcanoes," said Hugh Thomas, the director of the project. "Perhaps, by placing some of these structures on prominent landscape features like volcanoes, they may have been used as landscape markers or perhaps territorial markers denoting pastoral grazing areas for specific groups," Thomas said. "What is really interesting is that some mustatil are highly visible, whilst others are almost hidden. There appears to be almost no consistency in the placement, which is highly unusual," Thomas said.

Desert kite in Jordan

Desert Kites

Neolithic hunters used “desert kites” to herd, trap and then kill prey. Eric A. Powell wrote in Archaeology Magazine: Desert kites consist of pairs of rock walls that extend across the landscape, often over several miles, and converge on an enclosure where prey such as gazelles could be herded and then easily dispatched. Ones in Jordan date to the Neolithic period (12,000 to 7,000 years ago). Reuters reported: “Although such structures can also be found elsewhere in the arid landscapes of the Middle East and south west Asia, these are believed to be the oldest, best preserved and the largest, the experts said. [Source: Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Hams Rabah, Reuters, February 23, 2022; Eric A. Powell, Archaeology Magazine, January/February 2023]

Desert kites are dry stone wall structures found in mainly in Southwest Asia (Middle East) but also in North Africa, Central Asia and Arabia. They were first discovered from the air during the 1920s. There are over 6,000 known ones, ranging in size from less than a hundred meters to several kilometres. They typically have a kite shape formed by two convergent "antennae" that run towards an enclosure, all formed by walls of dry stone less than one metre high, but variations exist. Research published in 2022 has shown that pits several metres deep often lie at the margins of enclosures, which have been interpreted as traps and killing pits.[Source: Wikipedia]

Similar structures have been in northern areas, notably under Lake Huron, and were used during the glacial peak of the last Ice Age to hunt reindeer. Recently one was found in the Baltic Sea. They have also been found in Greenland. Dating kites is difficult;various dating methods like radiocarbon dating and optically stimulated luminescence have yielded a wide range of dates. There are a handful of description in old travel reports. Some kites have later archaeological structures bult over them so if that structure can be dated we know at least the desert kite is at least older than the structure, and calculating erosion rates can provide a better date.

How Desert Kites Worked

“Desert kites” is a term generally used for animal herding traps found in Central and Southwestern Asia, as this was the term given them by the RAF pilots who first saw them from the air in the 1920s.“‘Pit-traps’ were where the animals were driven and killed. Elsewhere similar mega-hunting structures are referred as “game drives” or “game traps”. Two engravings, depicting how desert kites worked were found in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, according to a study published in PLOS ONE on May 17, 2023. [Source: Irene Wright, Miami Herald, May 18, 2023]

Desert Kites in west Samar in the Negev Desert of southern Israel

According to the Miami Herald: One carving, carved into stone using stone tools, measures slightly more than 2 feet long and 1 foot wide and was found in the Jibal al-Khasabiyeh region of Jordan. It is estimated to be 7,000 years old and was found in an area with eight known desert kite structures, according to the study. A second engraving, found in Zebel az-Zilliyat, Saudi Arabia, is much larger and dated to around 8,000 years ago, according to the study. The engraving is nearly five times the size of the Jordan engraving. Researchers excavated the depiction and found that it was pecked, not carved, and was likely created using hand picks. The engravings would allow people at the time to have a blueprint for the kites, which could then be shared and scaled up in a collective construction effort, the study said.

“Plans like these would have been needed by the constructors as the whole layout is impossible to grasp without seeing it from the air. Until now, evidence for plans of large structures has been seen in rough representations, but these designs are extremely precise,” the researchers said in a May 17 news release. “Although human constructions have modified natural spaces for millennia, few plans or maps predate the period of the literate civilizations of Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt.”

The engravings are not only more intellectually sophisticated than researchers thought the people of the time could produce, but they may be the “oldest known plans to scale in human history.” Study author Rémy Crassard told Haaretz that the structures weren’t for worshiping gods or conducting rituals. They had one purpose — they were killing pits. Crassard said that some of the “mega-traps” could cover distances of more than 30 miles, so if an animal was able to survive one, it would get caught in another, Haaretz said. The traps channel migrating species into pits, allowing people to kill a large number systematically. “The community aspect of these large-scale hunts is another element supporting the hypothesis of a need to communicate, in particular to share spatial information, by means of a realistic representation intended for a human group participating in a common action,” the study said.

7,000-Year-Old Lava Dome Stone “Gates” and Trapezoidal Platforms

About 400 mysterious stone structures which archaeologists call "gates," based off of their loose resemblance to "old fashioned field gates," have been discovered in Saudi Arabia. Made of low stone walls that are sometimes built in a rectangular shape the purpose and exact date of the gates are unknown although researchers believe that they date back thousands of years. Sometimes several gates found clustered together. One of the larger gates is about 366 meters (1200 feet) about three times the length of a football field. Another cluster of gates contains a gate that about 290 meters (950) feet long. Why the gates cluster together is unknown. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, October 17, 2017]

Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: The gates come in a number of different shapes and sizes. Some of the gates, which archaeologists call "I-type" gates, contain one wall with heaps of rock at the ends of the wall. Two I-type gates, built side by side, can be seen in this picture along with other gates. Other types of stone structures have also been found in Saudi Arabia. Often these stone structures are built on top of or even inside gates. This suggests that the gates are older than the other stone structures. This picture shows a gate that has a triangle stone structure with heaps of stone that lead to a bullseye shaped stone structure (possibly a tomb).

Harrat Khaybar from space

The gates tend to be located in lavafields that are inhospitable for human life. However thousands of years ago these areas would have been wetter and contained more life. A few gates were found on the slopes of a lava dome. Many lava dome gates were mapped by volcanologists Vic Camp and John Roobol in the 1980s. The volcanologists were mapping the "Harret Khaybar" region of Saudi Arabia where many gates are located. The remains of a lava flow are sometimes very close to in the "Harret Khaybar" gates. The lava flow may be partially covering a third gate. Camp notes that the lava flows tend to cover the gates and other stone structures something which suggests that the gates are older than the lava flows. Camp suggested that they could date back around 7,000 years. The study of gates has taken on some urgency as modern day development is threatening or has already destroyed some of them.

According to Archaeology magazine: Nomadic pastoralists roaming northern Saudi Arabia 7,500 years ago built an unusual stone platform near the oasis site of Dumat al-Jandal. The trapezoidal monument was first constructed in the middle of the 6th millennium B.C., but was modified several times, eventually reaching a length of 115 feet. In and around the structure, archaeologists discovered several burials that suggest the stone monument was an important place of commemoration that was used for funerary and social rituals for thousands of years. [Source: Archaeology magazine, September-November 2020]

Large 4,500-Year-Old Network of 'Funerary Avenues' Found in Saudi Arabia

Archaeologists in northwest Saudi Arabia have discovered a huge network 4,500-year-old "funerary avenues" — the longest of which 170 kilometers (105 miles) — alongside thousands of pendant-shaped stone tombs. The avenues linked oases together and formed an ancient highway network of sorts, the researchers said. Funeral processions may have taken place on them.[Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, January 17, 2022]

Some of the avenues are delineated with red rock, but most "were simply formed as the ground was worn smooth by the footfall of ancient people — and especially by the hooves of their domestic animals," Mat Dalton, a research associate at the University of Western Australia and lead author of January 2022 paper on the avenues published in the journal The Holocene, told Live Science.

The network of avenues would have facilitated long-distance travel. "By following these networks, people could have traversed a distance of at least 530 km [330 miles] from north to south. There are also hints of such avenues in southern Saudi Arabia and in Yemen. These require further research but could suggest even longer-distance movements by ancient populations," Dalton said. Archaeologists don't know much about the rituals that were conducted on the funerary avenues or even in the tombs that lined the pathways, Dalton said. Human remains inside the tombs are in poor shape, and some of the tombs have been robbed, leaving them bereft of artifacts. Despite the lack of information, "it's not difficult to imagine that the tombs were used to remember or commemorate the dead, especially as the descendants or relations of those buried within them would have probably walked past them frequently during the course of their everyday lives," Dalton said. "We might even envision funerary processions along avenues from settled oases towards the tombs, but this is purely hypothetical until we find more evidence," Dalton said.

According to Live Science: At around the same time that the tombs and avenues were constructed, the Egyptians built the pyramids — including the Great Pyramid of Giza. Meanwhile in Mesopotamia to the north of Arabia, a number of civilizations flourished and built cities and large pyramid-shaped temples known as ziggurats. Despite the flourishing cultures in neighboring Egypt and Mesopotamia, Dalton doesn't think that people in Saudi Arabia were inspired by them to build the funerary avenues and tombs. "We think that this phenomenon was certainly an indigenous development," Dalton said, noting that people in Saudi Arabia had been building large stone structures for thousands of years before pyramids were built in Egypt. For instance, gate-shaped structures called mustatils were built 7,000 years ago in Arabia and may have been used for a prehistoric cattle cult.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, mustalis by Dr Huw Groucutt

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Mesopotamia sourcebooks.fordham.edu , National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, especially Merle Severy, National Geographic, May 1991 and Marion Steinmann, Smithsonian, December 1988, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated June 2024