They number in the hundreds, can be larger than an NFL football field and are found throughout Saudi Arabia, including on the slope of a volcano. Speaking stone structures reported in 2017 now appear to be some of the oldest monuments in the world, dating back 7,000 years, archaeologists now report.
A new study of the mysterious stone structures – once called “gates”, but now referred to as “mustatils”, the Arabic word for “rectangle” – suggests that they were used for rituals; and radiocarbon dating of charcoal found in one of the structures indicates that humans it was around 5000 BC. built, reports a team of researchers in an article recently published in the journal The Holocene.
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“The Mustatil phenomenon represents a remarkable development of monumental architecture, as hundreds of these structures were built in northwestern Arabia,” the researchers wrote in their paper. “This ‘monumental landscape’ represents one of the earliest large-scale forms of monumental stone construction anywhere in the world.”
Ritual use
The structures are made of hollow stone walls that form what often resembles a field gate from above (hence its former name). They vary in size with some measuring less than 49 feet (15 m) long and the largest measuring over 621 m (616 m) long.
When first constructed, many of the mustaches would have a platform on opposite sides of the “rectangle”, the researchers found when analyzing some of the structures. On the platform of one mustache, they discovered a painting with geometric designs on it. The design of the painting “is currently unknown from other contexts with rock art” in the region, the team wrote in the magazine article.
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It “is quite possible that these structures have been visually spectacular, and perhaps quite extensively painted,” studied lead author Huw Groucutt, the leader of the Extreme Events Group at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany, told Live Science.
A few artifacts were found in the mustaches, suggesting that the structures were not occupied or used year-round. Also the “the long walls [of the mustatils] are very low and typically lack clear entry points, and therefore do not appear to be as functional as something like animal grains, “the team wrote.
Still, if the mustatils were in fact the sites of rituals, it is not yet clear what types of rituals took place there.
Territorial markers?
Today, the structures are found in a number of very arid places, including the southern Nefud Desert (where Groucutt’s team conducted their fieldwork) as well as barren, inhospitable lava fields.
But if the structures existed around 5000 BC. were made, they would have been in use when the climate in Saudi Arabia was waterier than it is today. “Between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago,” the Arabian Peninsula saw the most recent of the ‘Green Arabia’ periods, when increased rainfall transformed this generally arid region, “the researchers wrote in the newspaper.
At the time, people in the region were approached to be pastoralists – relying on herds of domesticated animals for food – while also hunting for some wildlife, the researchers wrote in the newspaper. As such, the mustatils could have been a way for the people to mark their territory, the researchers said.
The mustatils may “represent one manifestation of the growing territoriality that is being developed, induced by factors such as competition for pastures in the challenging and unpredictable environments of Arabia,” she wrote.
Even when the climate in Arabia was wettest, “the environment would have been hot for seasons and droughts would have occurred,” she added.
Researchers respond
Yorke Rowan, a senior research fellow at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, praised the research, noting that there are older examples of large-scale monumental stone construction noting that “kites” (massive stone structures used to hunt animals) appear to be older.
Gary Rollefson, an emeritus professor at Whitman College in Washington who was not involved in this study, called the findings “absolutely fascinating.” He noted that in addition to mustaches, there are other types of rock structures in the area that may also have been sites for ritual activity.
“The paper by Groucutt et al. Is an admirably detailed account of one enigmatic type of construction – the Mustatil rectangle – although there are several other beautiful architectural patterns that reflect on a large scale human cooperative ventures that are not very apparent utilitarian. aim beyond social identity, social affirmation and social memory, ”Rollefson told Live Science.
Originally published on Live Science.
