Posted on 09/14/2011 10:09:47 AM PDT by Palter
They stretch from Syria to Saudi Arabia, can be seen from the air but not the ground, and are virtually unknown to the public.
They are the Middle East's own version of the Nazca Lines — ancient "geolyphs," or drawings, that span deserts in southern Peru — and now, thanks to new satellite-mapping technologies, and an aerial photography program in Jordan, researchers are discovering more of them than ever before. They number well into the thousands.
Referred to by archaeologists as "wheels," these stone structures have a wide variety of designs, with a common one being a circle with spokes radiating inside. Researchers believe that they date back to antiquity, at least 2,000 years ago. They are often found on lava fields and range from 82 feet to 230 feet (25 meters to 70 meters) across. [See gallery of wheel structures]
"In Jordan alone we've got stone-built structures that are far more numerous than (the) Nazca Lines, far more extensive in the area that they cover, and far older," said David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia.
Kennedy's new research, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, reveals that these wheels form part of a variety of stone landscapes. These include kites (stone structures used for funnelling and killing animals); pendants (lines of stone cairns that run from burials); and walls, mysterious structures that meander across the landscape for up to several hundred feet and have no apparent practical use.
His team's studies are part of a long-term aerial reconnaissance project that is looking at archaeological sites across Jordan.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
God was just doodling one time when he was on a really boring conference call with Mohammed...
looks like crop circle practice
oh, those crazy pub wankers with boards and chains!
Perhaps.
O.K., I’m not the most popular Freeper but here’s the deal. It’s 2011 last time I checked; human beings have been flying airplanes now for near 100 years or more. And from Syria and over and throughout the Middle East, people have been flying aircraft since after WWI, (that’s world war one for those of you in Loma Linda).
And no one noticed and no one reported? No one noted and no one wrote anything in all those years? Sure, yea, that’s because..........they never looked DOWN! Millions of passenger/aviators, bored tourists on those planes that circle till you give in and buy a house on the Kibutz; they never once looked down! That’s why there’s a big blank spot all over the area known as the Middle East on Google Earth.....can’t look down there.
UNTIL NOW; Just DISCOVERED NAZCA LINES IN THE MIDEAST! Except of course........they’re NAZCA CIRCLES THAT WERE LINES! Oh, crap, who’s to quibble, line? Circle? it’s all the same after a few drinks.
No doubt homesites and animal pens but stone walls will generally have been built by slave labor ~ kept busy by owners to keep down trouble.
I've used "Southeastern University" in some of my fiction. I hope there isn't a real one.
saw this guy. looks like he’s trying for the “Lando Molari” look. not even Vir.
http://www.seu.edu/
I am. Can I help you with something?
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This looks exactly like the abandoned villages of Darfur.
Go to Google Earth and zoom in to Sudan, then go zoom in on the Crisis in Darfur special layer, zoom in, exactly the same.
Bramble enclosures to keep wild life out and domestic animals inside, with reed huts, stones used as sidewall buttresses.
Looks like microscope view of cell structures to me
Glass?
Very artful glass, anyway.
Indeed. [chuckles]
I don’t see the similarity to Nazca. The Nazca lines are figures that take some complex planning to lay them out. These things seem pretty easy to visualise and to lay out on the ground. Some of these things., at least, have practical uses. The arabian structures are built up of stones. The Nazca lines are groundcover scraped away.
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