Researcher finds ancient stones in Saudi desert

Nearly 400 mysterious ancient stone structures have been identified in the Saudi Arabian desert by an Australian researcher using Google Earth.

David Kennedy, whose team has spent decades recording thousands of archaeological sites in the Middle East, said the human-made edifices, known as “gates,” are thought to have been constructed between 2,000 to 9,000 years ago.

Their purpose and function are a mystery.

“You can’t see them in any intelligible way at the ground level but once you get up a few hundred feet, or with a satellite even higher, they stand out beautifully,” the University of Western Australia academic said in a statement on Wednesday.

Kennedy said he was baffled when he first saw the remote and inhospitable site in the lava fields of an ancient volcano, on satellite images, despite some 40 years working in the region.

“I refer to them as ‘gates’ because when you view them from above they look like a simple field gate lying flat, two upright posts on the sides, connected by one or more long bars,” he said.

“They don’t look like structures where people would have lived nor do they look like animal traps or for disposing of dead bodies. It’s a mystery as to what their purpose would have been.”

His findings are described in a paper published next month in the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy.

He said not much was known about the people who built them, but they were believed to be ancestors of the modern-day Bedouin.