PAUL SIEVEKING presents our round-up of archæological discoveries, including new NASA photos of Kazakhstan’s giant geometric geoglyphs and proof that Carthage was not the most child-friendly of places.
geoglyphs were largely unknown to the outside world until midoctober, when nasa released clear satellite photographs of some of the figures from about 430 miles (690km) up, showing details as small as 30x30cm (one square foot). “i don’t think they were meant to be seen from the air,” mr Dey, 44, said in an interview from his hometown, Kostanay, dismissing speculations involving aliens. he thinks that the figures built along straight lines on elevations were “horizontal observatories to track the movements of the rising sun.” this, of course, is one theory about the purpose of stonehenge and other megalithic structures.
in the Cretaceous period 100 million years ago, turgai was bisected by a strait from what is now the mediterranean to the arctic ocean. the rich lands of the steppe were good stone age hunting grounds, and mr Dey’s research suggests that the mahandzhar culture, which flourished there from 7,000 BC to 5,000 BC, could be linked to the older figures. however, orthodox opinion has resisted the notion that a nomadic population could have stayed put for the time required to lay ramparts and dig out lake bed sediments to construct the huge mounds – which were originally
ONE COVERS MORE TERRAIN THAN THE GREAT PYRAMID
6ft to 10ft (1.8-3m) high and now 3ft (90cm) high and nearly 40ft (12m) across. however, the figures and similar ones in peru and Chile are changing views about early nomads.
“the idea that foragers could amass the numbers of people necessary to undertake largescale projects — like creating the Kazakhstan geoglyphs — has caused archæologists to deeply rethink the nature and timing of sophisticated largescale human organisation as one that predates settled and civilised societies,” said persis B Clarkson, an archæologist at the university of Winnipeg. With no genetic material to analyse (neither of the two mounds that have been dug into is a burial site), giedre motuzaite matuzeviciute, an archæologist from Cambridge university and a lecturer at Vilnius university in lithuania, used optically stimulated luminescence, a method of measuring doses from ionizing radiation, to date one of the mounds to around 800 BC. mr Dey cited a separate scholarly report linking artefacts from the mahandzhar culture to other figures, suggesting a date as early as 6,000 BC for the oldest.
time is an enemy, said mr Dey. one figure, called the Koga Cross, was substantially destroyed by road builders this year. and that, he said, “was after we notified officials”. the main glyphs are large enough to be easily visible on google earth. the ushtogaysky square is at 50.832933°n 65.326276°e, and the swastika at 50.102778°n 65.360833°e, only about half a mile from the town of urpek. nytimes.com, 30 Oct; Times, 2 Nov 2015