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Olivier Barge, archaeologist and cartographer at the Arque Orien laboratory of the University of Lyon 2 University, explains these traps as “large areas bordered by long walls extending over several kilometers” and resembling the tail of a kite.
A group of archaeologists discovered stone inscriptions that are the oldest known engineering plans so far, dating back to nine thousand years, representing vast built structures intended for hunting in areas that are today desert spaces in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
Pilots in the twenties of the last century were the first to discover these traps, and called them “desert kites” because of the way they look from the air.
Olivier Barge, archaeologist and cartographer at the “Arché Orienne” laboratory of the University of Lyon 2, explains these traps as “large areas bordered by long walls extending over several kilometers” and resembling the tail of a kite. Once the width of these passages narrows to about twenty meters, they open up “on a closed area of about one hectare, which includes pits several meters deep.”
The co-author of the study, which was published this month in the American Journal of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says that these structures constituted an “advanced hunting technique”, as animals, including deer, were collected in these traps, before being placed in pits to be slaughtered.
The “Global Kites” project organized by his laboratory has managed to count six thousand similar structures to date, from Kazakhstan to Jordan.
In 2015, a group of archaeologists affiliated with the “Arché Orien” laboratory made two discoveries that Olivier Barge describes as “extraordinary” in the Khashabiyeh Mountains in Jordan, and in the great Nefud desert located in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, about 250 km to the east from the first site.
A stone slab of light brown limestone, about a meter high, was discovered in Jordan, while a huge block of black sandstone was discovered in the Arabian Peninsula, both with engraved and detailed plans of “desert kites” from close-up. These plans are not just a simple sketch, according to Wael Abu Aziza, an archaeologist at the French Institute for the Near East and co-author of the study.
Perceiving details about spaces
The scientist adds that “it is difficult to accurately retrieve the plans of the desert kites, as is the case here,” without the use of modern techniques, because drawing an old diagram means mastering the sizes of the elements in it and knowing their exact sizes. However, the challenge here is that what we are dealing with are facilities whose full form cannot be understood without seeing them from the air.”
It is not known, Olivier Barge says, but the study notes that it shows that the population of the era had an “unexpected mental capacity to visualize spaces”.
He adds that the hypothesis that has prevailed until today is that the art of cartography was born at a later stage and within “a culture whose owners are proficient in writing and keeping records, similar to the culture of Mesopotamia that dates back five thousand years, or that of the Bronze Age in Europe four years ago.” With a map of Saint-Belec in Brittany.
What was discovered in Jordan and Saudi Arabia prompts a reconsideration of this hypothesis, as the structures were built in complex terrain, without adopting a master plan to be implemented on the ground.
This engineering scheme allowed “the transfer and sharing of information among several people with the aim of organizing animal hunting operations,” according to Abu Aziza, who considers this hypothesis to be “the most likely.”
In addition to this, there is a cultural dimension in the plans, which became an indication of the mastery of the population at that time in dealing with areas and a specific hunting technique, through traps that they skillfully designed based on the special features of the land in those areas.