archaeogate - arabia: from craters to stone circles, by ac sparavigna

8/11/2019 Archaeogate - Arabia: From Craters to Stone Circles, by AC Sparavigna

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6/13/12 Archaeogate - Arabia: from craters to stone circles - di Amelia Carolina Sparavigna

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continental rifting activity [5,6], corresponding to a long volcanic system, the MakkahMadinahNufud

line, created by an active mantle up-welling. According to these researches, there is a fracture with

crustal rifting in Arabia, which is much more recent of the Red Sea rift.

Figure 1 shows some of the craters in Arabia: one of them is crossed by a road and has a town, As

Sayl, inside. The images are obta ined from Google Maps, enhanced with image processing methods, as

discussed in Ref. 7 and 8. Several other volcanic cones can be observed. One cone is attracting the

attention because of its almost perfect shape and a close valley full of sand, with a crescent moon

shape (see Figure 2, low panel). In fact, zooming the images to observe more details of the cone and

its closer area, we can see small circles with diameters ranging from 10 to 15 meters, with a mound ofstones inside. Knowing that near Titicaca Lake, worship places were composed by cairns of stones

inside stone enclosures [9], I searched other such structures near the region of the crescent-moon

valley, in particular, those which are clearly man-made. Figure 2 shows the result of this search, limited

to the area w ith high-resolution satellite imagery: the markers are denoting the positions of stone

circles. Of course, Figure 2 is not claiming to be exhaustive: surely more places have to be marked in

this map. The figure is just trying to determine a rough distribution of these places. Figure 3 shows in

more detail the positions of stone circles on a landform which seems a peninsula on a lake of sand. The

following Figure 4 gives some pictures of these stone circles.

After searching with Google for deta ils and references about possible stone circles in Arabia, some

interesting web pages have been found. These pages show the archaeological evidence of the Neolithicperiod in Arabia. Among the Neolithic structures there are stone circles, lines and "desert kites", which

were kite-shaped Neolithic stone fences, probably used as animal traps. There is also abundant

archaeological evidence of Neolithic communities over harraat of Rahat and Khaybar, where thousands

of tumuli and stone fences, keyhole-shaped, kite-shaped and circular, cover extensive areas [4]. The

absolute time period of Neolithic in Arabia was 11,000-5,750 before present. For the bulk of the

peninsula the term Neolithic is used to cover the period from 8,000 to 5,750 before present [10].

One quite interesting web page is Ref.11: the author, pen-name KenGrok, is discussing his researches

of the Neolithic stone structures, using the sate llite imagery. He found stone circles and other figures all

situated at the peaks of hills or at the edges of plateaus. In [11], an article is reported, published in

1977 by the Sydney Morning Herald, telling that "enigmatic circular stone formations, reminiscent of

those found in Europe, are scattered throughout this arid country on hilltops and valleys remote fromhuman habitation. The rings are formed by stone walls that are 30 to 60 centimeters ta ll and range in

diameter from five meters to more than 100 meters. No legends cast light on the ir origins or purpose

and theories are myriad. Amateur archaeologists have noted that many of the rings have "ta ils," one or

more appendages that sometimes s tretch out for hundreds of meters across the wilderness. ... The

English-language daily newspaper Arab News has speculated that a cluster of stone rings 60 km north

of the Red Sea port of Jedda may be ancient grave sites. The walls were too low to have served as

sheep or goat pens, the newspaper reasoned. Mr. Ron Worl, of the US Geological Survey [12], ...

concluded that the stone rings could be the desert equivalent of rock carvings, ancient signposts that

point the way to freshwater springs or caravan routes. Several of the "tails" led to water or old desert

paths" [11-13].

After his survey with sate llite, the author of [11] noted that only basic shapes were used and that

these structures are not distributed evenly or at random. They appear most often along what must

have been travel routes , usually found at prominent points of sorts (see for instance, Figure 3).

In [11], the different shapes of these Neolithic structures are listed: stone circles, often perfectly round

with a cairn at the centre, stone circles with triangles, triangles and mounds of two kinds, round w ith

flat top or with a depression or hole in the middle. In fact, as observed in [11], some mounds may be

small volcano vents or cones, because from satellite imagery only, it is hard to tell whether they are

man-made or geo logical features. Other structures have the shape of needles, lines or tails. There are

enclosures, sometimes with round structures or irregulars: according to [11], these enclosures were

very old dwelling and/or livestock areas.

Arabia is also spotted by the so-called "desert kites". Soon after air travel began over the Arabian

peninsula pilots reported these big structures, and perhaps, this is why these objects result as quite

deeply studied [4,14,15]. Several area in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Iraq are covered with these

man-made prehistoric kites, that sometimes are spanning kilometers of desert. Some researchers date

them to Neolithic periods [14,15], and agree on the fact that they were used as hunting traps, to herd


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game in the ending enclosure of the kite.

Desert kites are basically triangular shapes with one end opened. It consist of two converging more or

less straight walls, that create a funnel which ends with a narrow passage to a sort of pen. Typically

there are two, three or more circular enclosures on the edge of this corral. There are archaeological

rock art images de fining these structures as hunting traps [16] and depicting the true role of the 'walls'

of kites, that lead to ending enclosure. These walls are low and then not able to stop any game. These

walls are not walls at all: they are the basements, in rocky harraat, to stick some poles in the ground

and build a fence with branches. Moreover, as told in [16], these hunting traps where not designed to

just capture and then kill animals, but also for the conservation of food, keeping the game alive, in smallhuts at the end of the kites. "What we have here is evidently a first attempt of domestication of animals

... We probably do not speak of real domestication, but a step between hunting and organized

intentional raising of animals" [16]. Of course, some scholars do not agree with such conclusions [14].

Another interesting point is raised [16]. In the Khaybar area, there are remains of Neolithic villages very

close to the hunting desert kites. Linking the desert kites with the remains of houses and villages could

be then a mistake, because wild animals are avoiding places where people live. Khaybar area is full

with ancient burial structures, sometimes placed inside the desert kites. A possible conclusion [16] is

that these burial mounds are from later periods, quite after the creation of the desert kites that could

be placed in the early Neolithic times, when people settled and started to domesticate animals. These

conclusions on burial places and kites have been obtained just using satellite images. It seems thenthat satellites can make a portrait of a form of collective hunting in its early stages of evolution into

animal domestication.

As we concluded in [9], the use of Google Maps or in general of sate llite services devoted to the

analysis of "landscapes and built environments", can give useful information for archaeo logical and

historical studies, for those locations well-preserved and not destroyed by natural or human activities.

References

[1] Arabian Peninsula, Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary, 3rd Edition.

[2] Quaternary Deserts and Climatic Change, A.S. Alsharhan, IGCP Project 349, page 279.

[3] Arabia. Britannica Online Encyclopedia.[4] Volcanic Arabia, P. Harrigan, pages 2-13 of the March/April 2006 print edition of Saudi Aramco World,

also http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200602/volcanic.arabia.htm

[5] Upwelling asthenosphere beneath western Arabia and its regional implications, V.E. Camp, M.J.

Roobol, 1992, Journal of Geophysical Research, volume 97, number B11, pages 15,255-15,271, see also

The lava fields of Saudi Arabia: an interview with Dr. John Roobol, and references therein, 2005, by John

and Susy Pint, http://www.saudicaves.com/lava/introobl.htm

[6] Form and growth of an embryonic continental rift: InSAR observations and modeling of the 2009

western Arabia rifting episode, G. Baer, Y. Hamiel, Geophysical Journa l International, Volume 182, Issue

1, pages 155167, July 2010.

[7] Enhancing the Google imagery using a wavelet filter, A.C. Sparavigna, Geophysics (physics.geo-ph);

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP), arXiv:1009.1590

[8] Crater-like landform in Bayuda desert (a processing of sate llite images), A.C. Sparavigna,

Geophysics (physics.geo-ph); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP), arXiv:1008.0500

[9] Andean terraced hills (a use of satellite imagery), A.C. Sparavigna, Geophysics (physics.geo-ph),

arXiv:1010.5142

[10] Early Arabian Pastoral, Encyclopedia of Prehistory: South and Southwest Asia, P.N. Peregrine, M.

Ember, 2003.

[11] Neolithic sites in Arabia and East Africa, a post by KenGrok, Germany, August 2009,

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1250382]

[12] Mapping Arabia, J.V. Parry, Saudi Aramco World, January/February 2004, pag.20-37, also

http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200401/mapping.arabia.htm

[13] Riddle of Arabia's stone rings, Sydney Morning Herald, 31 December 1977.

[14] The function of "Desert Kites" - Uniting or livestock husbandry? B. Rosen, A. Perevolotsky,Palorient, Vol.24, Pag. 107-111, 1998.

[15] The Desert "Kites" of the Badiyat Esh-Sham and North Arabia, A.V.G. Betts, S. Helms, Palorient,

Vol.13, Pag. 41-67, 1987.

[16] Khaybar Desert Kites, Vanja Janei, alsahra.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/khaybar-desert-

kites.pdf


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Amelia Carolina Sparavigna

Dipartimento di Fisica, Politecnico di Torino

Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, Torino, Italy

Pagina stampata da Archaeogate: http://www.archaeogate.org/

Vietata la copia e la distribuzione (anche parziale) senza la previa autorizzazione di Archaeogate.itCopyright 2004-2012 ARCHAEOGATE - Tutti i diritti riservati


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Arabia: from craters to stone circles - diAmelia Carolina SparavignaRedazione Archaeogate, 19-11-2010

Geologically, Arabia lies on a tectonic plate of its own, the ArabianPlate, which is moving away from Africa, creating the Red Sea, andcrushing northward with the Eurasian plate. The Romans subdividedthis peninsula in three regions. One was the Arabia Petraea covering awide region comprising the southern Syria, Jordan, the Sinai Peninsulaand the north-western Saudi Arabia. Arabia Petraea was a romanprovince, with Petra as capital. The other two regions were the ArabiaDeserta, the desert interior of the peninsula and the Arabia Felix,corresponding to the modern Yemen, which enjoys a more wet climate[1-3].

The Arabian peninsula has a central plateau, the Nejd, slopingeastward from the mountains along the coast of the Red Sea, to theshallow waters of the Persian Gulf, with a crescent of sand and graveldeserts toward east. The huge deserts are the stony Nefud in thenorth, the Dahna and the sands of Rub' Al-Khali. Ranges of mountainsrun parallel to the Red Sea coast on the west and at the south-easternend of the peninsula.

Most of the Arabian rivers are wadis, that is rivers which are dryexcept during the rainy season. The presence of several aquife rscreates the oases, when the flow of water reaches the surface of thedesert. Under the sand of deserts, in 1932, oil was found. It could thenhappen that Arabia is imagined with a stereotype of sand-and-graveldeserts, punctured by oases and o il-wells, neglecting a quite importantaspect of the region. This is the volcanic nature of the Arabian Shield,the geological name for much of the western Arabian peninsula. TheWestern Arabia is not only covered with sand, it is also clad with vastfields of lava. In Arabic, these lava fields are known as harraat(singular, harrah; before a name, harrat). Harraat together are

creating large alkali basalt regions, covering some several thousand ofsquare kilometers [4].

In 1256 an eruption threatened the city of Medinah, cover ing previouslava flows. The lava field near Madinah, which is known as HarratRahat is due to a volcanic activity of two million of years which is stillactive. The most recent eruptions on the Arabian Peninsula occurred in1937, on a harrah near the town of Dhamar, in the north of Yemen.Before that, in 1846 an eruption took place on a volcanic Red Seaisland. By counting the number of eruptions that have occurred on thenorthern Harrat Rahat, volcanologists estimate that, during the past4,500 years, there have been 13 major eruptions, one every 346years, on average [4]. The Arabian peninsula is then subjected tohazards coming from volcanic eruptions and from much more frequentearthquakes.

A survey with Google Maps shows the extensive lava fields coveringthe peninsula. Satellite imagery reveals the extent of harraat, withdifferent colors of magma extruded in past epochs. Jet-black indicatesthe most recent flows. White areas are also observable, revealingplaces covered by silt and salt, which are residues of seasonal lakes,created by the lava flows that blocked some wadi rivers.

In Arabia, the maar craters, the landforms created by explosiveeruptions, are huge: an explosion, generated by the mixture ofbasaltic magma with subterranean water, produced the maar crater ofal-Wahbah on the western margins of Harrat Kashib. According to [4],it is the Harrat Khaybar which is having the most distinctive volcanicscenery in all of Arabia, with the white cones of Jabal Bayda' and JabalAbyad.

As a result of their detailed harraat research on-site work, Camp andRoobol discovered a new continental rifting activity [5,6],corresponding to a long volcanic system, the MakkahMadinahNufudline, created by an active mantle up-welling. According to theseresearches, there is a fracture with crustal rifting in Arabia, which ismuch more recent of the Red Sea rift.

Figure 1 shows some of the craters in Arabia: one of them is crossedby a road and has a town, As Sayl, inside. The images are obtainedfrom Google Maps, enhanced with image processing methods, asdiscussed in Ref. 7 and 8. Several other volcanic cones can beobserved. One cone is attracting the attention because of its almostperfect shape and a close valley full of sand, with a crescent moonshape (see Figure 2, low panel). In fact, zooming the images toobserve more details of the cone and its closer area, we can see small

Cliccare sull 'immagine perl'ingrandimento

Figure 1: Some craters in Arabia.One of them has a road and a town,As Sayl , ins ide. Coordinates andscales are give in each panel. Theimages have been obtained after

enhancing the Google Mapscorresponding images .

Figure 2: The lower panel s hows analmost perfect v olcanic cone and anear valley which seems a crescentmoon. The upper panel shows t helocations of s tone circles and others tone enclosures. The pos ition of

the volcanic cone is ins ide the whitesquare.

Figure 3: Pos itions of some stonecircles.

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circles with diameters ranging from 10 to 15 meters, with a mound ofstones inside. Knowing that near Titicaca Lake, worship places werecomposed by cairns of stones inside stone enclosures [9], I searchedother such structures near the region of the crescent-moon valley, inparticular, those which are clearly man-made. Figure 2 shows theresult of this search, limited to the area with high-resolution satelliteimagery: the markers are denoting the positions of stone circles. Ofcourse, Figure 2 is not claiming to be exhaustive: surely more placeshave to be marked in this map. The figure is just trying to determine arough distribution of these places. Figure 3 shows in more detail thepositions of stone circles on a landform which seems a peninsula on alake of sand. The following Figure 4 gives some pictures of these stonecircles.

After searching with Google for details and references about possiblestone circles in Arabia, some interesting web pages have been found.These pages show the archaeological evidence of the Neolithic periodin Arabia. Among the Neolithic structures there are stone circles, linesand "desert kites", which were kite-shaped Neolithic stone fences,probably used as animal traps. There is also abundant archaeologicalevidence of Neolithic communities over harraat of Rahat and Khaybar,where thousands of tumuli and stone fences, keyhole-shaped, kite-shaped and circular, cover extensive areas [4]. The absolute timeperiod of Neolithic in Arabia was 11,000-5,750 before present. For thebulk of the peninsula the term Neolithic is used to cover the periodfrom 8,000 to 5,750 before present [10].

One quite interesting web page is Ref.11: the author, pen-nameKenGrok, is discussing his researches of the Neolithic stone structures,using the satellite imagery. He found stone circles and other figures allsituated at the peaks of hills or at the edges of plateaus. In [11], anarticle is reported, published in 1977 by the Sydney Morning Herald,telling that "enigmatic circular stone formations, reminiscent of thosefound in Europe, are scattered throughout this arid country on hilltopsand valleys remote from human habitation. The rings are formed bystone walls that are 30 to 60 centimeters tall and range in diameterfrom five meters to more than 100 meters. No legends cast light ontheir origins or purpose and theories are myriad. Amateurarchaeologists have noted that many of the rings have "tails," one ormore appendages that sometimes stretch out for hundreds of metersacross the wilderness. ... The English-language daily newspaper ArabNews has speculated that a cluster of stone rings 60 km north of theRed Sea port of Jedda may be ancient grave sites. The walls were toolow to have served as sheep or goat pens, the newspaper reasoned.Mr. Ron Worl, of the US Geological Survey [12], ... concluded that thestone rings could be the desert equivalent of rock carvings, ancientsignposts that point the way to freshwater springs or caravan routes.Several of the "tails" led to water or old desert paths" [11-13].

After his survey with satellite, the author of [11] noted that only basicshapes were used and that these structures are not distributed evenly

or at random. They appear most often along what must have beentravel routes, usually found at prominent points of sorts (see forinstance, Figure 3).

In [11], the different shapes of these Neolithic structures are listed:stone circles, often perfectly round with a cairn at the centre, stonecircles with triangles, triangles and mounds of two kinds, round withflat top or with a depression or hole in the middle. In fact, as observedin [11], some mounds may be small volcano vents or cones, becausefrom satellite imagery only, it is hard to tell whether they are man-made or geological features. Other structures have the shape ofneedles, lines or tails. There are enclosures, sometimes with roundstructures or irregulars: according to [11], these enclosures were veryold dwelling and/or livestock areas.

Arabia is also spotted by the so-called "desert kites". Soon after airtravel began over the Arabian peninsula pilots reported these bigstructures, and perhaps, this is why these objects result as quite

deeply studied [4,14,15]. Several area in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syriaand Iraq are covered with these man-made prehistoric kites, thatsometimes are spanning kilometers of desert. Some researchers datethem to Neolithic periods [14,15], and agree on the fact that they wereused as hunting traps, to herd game in the ending enclosure of thekite.

Desert kites are basically triangular shapes with one end opened. Itconsist of two converging more or less straight walls, that create afunnel which ends with a narrow passage to a sort of pen. Typicallythere are two, three or more circular enclosures on the edge of thiscorral. There are archaeological rock art images defining thesestructures as hunting traps [16] and depicting the true role of the'walls' of kites, that lead to ending enclosure. These walls are low andthen not able to stop any game. These walls are not walls at all: theyare the basements, in rocky harraat, to stick some poles in the groundand build a fence with branches. Moreover, as told in [16], thesehunting traps where not designed to just capture and then kill animals,

but also for the conservation of food, keeping the game alive, in smallhuts at the end of the kites. "What we have here is evidently a firstattempt of domestication of animals ... We probably do not speak ofreal domestication, but a step between hunting and organizedintentional raising of animals" [16]. Of course, some scholars do notagree with such conclusions [14].

Another interesting point is raised [16]. In the Khaybar area, there areremains of Neolithic villages very close to the hunting desert kites.

Figure 4: Some stone circles


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be then a mistake, because wild animals are avoiding places wherepeople live. Khaybar area is full with ancient burial structures,sometimes placed inside the desert kites. A possible conclusion [16] isthat these burial mounds are from later periods, quite after thecreation of the desert kites that could be placed in the early Neolithictimes, when people settled and started to domesticate animals. Theseconclusions on burial places and kites have been obtained just usingsatellite images. It seems then that satellites can make a portrait of aform of collective hunting in its early stages of evolution into animaldomestication.

As we concluded in [9], the use of Google Maps or in general ofsatellite services devoted to the analysis of "landscapes and builtenvironments", can give useful information for archaeological and

historical studies, for those locations well-preserved and not destroyedby natural or human activities.

References[1] Arabian Peninsula, Merriam-Webster's Geographical Dictionary,3rd Edition.[2] Quaternary Deserts and Climatic Change, A.S. Alsharhan, IGCPProject 349, page 279.[3] Arabia. Br itannica Online Encyclopedia.[4] Volcanic Arabia, P. Harrigan, pages 2-13 of the March/April 2006print edition of Saudi Aramco World, alsohttp://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200602/volcanic.arabia.htm[5] Upwelling asthenosphere beneath western Arabia and its regionalimplications, V.E. Camp, M.J. Roobol, 1992, Journal of GeophysicalResearch, volume 97, number B11, pages 15,255-15,271, see alsoThe lava fields of Saudi Arabia: an interview with Dr. John Roobol, andreferences therein, 2005, by John and Susy Pint,

http://www.saudicaves.com/lava/introobl.htm[6] Form and growth of an embryonic continental rift: InSARobservations and modeling of the 2009 western Arabia r ifting episode,G. Baer, Y. Hamiel, Geophysical Journal International, Volume 182,Issue 1, pages 155167, July 2010.[7] Enhancing the Google imagery using a wavelet filter, A.C.Sparavigna, Geophysics (physics.geo-ph); Earth and PlanetaryAstrophysics (astro-ph.EP), arXiv:1009.1590[8] Crater-like landform in Bayuda desert (a processing of satelliteimages), A.C. Sparavigna, Geophysics (physics.geo-ph); Earth andPlanetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP), arXiv:1008.0500[9] Andean terraced hills (a use of satellite imagery), A.C.Sparavigna, Geophysics (physics.geo-ph), arXiv:1010.5142[10] Early Arabian Pastoral, Encyclopedia of Prehistory: South andSouthwest Asia, P.N. Peregrine, M. Ember, 2003.[11] Neolithic sites in Arabia and East Africa, a post by KenGrok,Germany, August 2009, http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1250382]

[12] Mapping Arabia, J.V. Parry, Saudi Aramco World,January/February 2004, pag.20-37, alsohttp://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/200401/mapping.arabia.htm[13] Riddle of Arabia's stone rings, Sydney Morning Herald, 31December 1977.[14] The function of "Desert Kites" - Uniting or livestock husbandry? B.Rosen, A. Perevolotsky, Palorient, Vol.24, Pag. 107-111, 1998.[15] The Desert "Kites" of the Badiyat Esh-Sham and North Arabia,A.V.G. Betts, S. Helms, Palorient, Vol.13, Pag. 41-67, 1987.[16] Khaybar Desert Kites, Vanja Janei, alsahra.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/khayb ar-desert-kites.pdf

Amelia Carolina SparavignaDipartimento di Fisica, Politecnico di TorinoCorso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, Torino, Italy

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