Archaeology: Discovery of the World’s Oldest Plans

Archaeologists have carved into stone 9,000-year-old plans representing massive structures built for hunting in the desert regions of present-day Jordan and Arabia. “Desert kites”, literally “desert kites”, were baptized by the first inventors in the 1920s – in the 1920s – because of the singular shape they can see from the sky.

“These are large structures separated by low walls, which are several kilometers long” and resemble the tracks of a kite. Once narrowed to twenty meters in width, the low-walled corridors “open into an enclosed area of ​​about one hectare, where deep pits are dug several meters deep,” describes Olivier Barge, archaeologist and cartographer at the Archaeological Observatory from Lyon. -2 University (South-Eastern France).

These constructions allowed for a “sophisticated hunting technique”: Animals were collected – for example, starlings – in such traps before being led to pits to kill them, describes a co-author of the study published this month. Science Library.

Nafut Saudi desert

The GlobalGuides project, organized by his lab, has so far identified more than 6,000 structures from Kazakhstan to Jordan. The latter, in Jibal al-Kashabiyeh and 250 km to the east, in the Saudi Nefud Desert, where Archaeorient’s team of archaeologists made two “exceptional discoveries”, in the words of Oliver Barge, in 2015.

The almost one-meter-high golden limestone in Jordan and the black sandstone in Arabia: both bear engraved and detailed designs of nearby “desert kites.” The plans are not a simple schematic representation, notes Wael Abu-Azizeh, an archaeologist at the French Institute of the Near East and co-author of the study.

“The Concept of Space”

Without the help of modern technologies, he says, “the kite’s plan cannot be delivered with the precision that is here.” Because drawing a measuring plan means mastering the proportions of the elements being represented, and hence their accurate measurement. A challenge is when it comes to structures whose overall shape cannot be grasped without observing from the air.

“We don’t know how they did it,” says Oliver Barge, whose study highlights the “often underestimated mental mastery of spatial perception” of the region’s population.

Cultural dimension

So far, it has been hypothesized that the art of cartography must have been born much later, “a cultural mastering of writing, integrated with the tradition of archives, with exchange networks”, continues the cartographer. Like Mesopotamia 5,000 years ago, or the Bronze Age of Europe 4,000 years ago, with the map of Saint-Peleg in Brittany.

Findings from Jordan and Saudi Arabia restructured the deal on the matter. Mega-structures are built on a complex landscape, bypassing the idea of ​​an initial plan and then reclaiming the ground. The project made it possible “for the organization of the hunt, to send information and share it with many people,” a “very likely” hypothesis, Mr. Abu-Aziz explains.

A cultural dimension is added to this. Through skillfully constructed traps that take advantage of the peculiarities of the landscape, the map is a symbol of mastery of space and a specific hunting technique.

(AFP)Show comments