Archaeologists, with the help of Google Earth, have uncovered nearly 400 undocumented stone structures they call “gates” in the Arabian desert that they believe may have been built by nomadic tribes thousands of years ago, reported The New York Times.
“We tend to think of Saudi Arabia as desert, but in practice there’s a huge archaeological treasure trove out there and it needs to be identified and mapped,” said David Kennedy, an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia and author of a paper set to appear in the November issue of the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy.
“You can’t see them very well from the ground level, but once you get up a few hundred feet, or with a satellite even higher, they stand out beautifully.”
Not much is known about the people who built the edifices, but they are thought to have constructed them at least 2,000 years ago and maybe as far back as 9,000 years ago, according to Dr. Kennedy.