Archaeologists were surprised by the oldest architectural plans of the mysterious structures of the Stone Age

The people of the Stone Age developed large-scale plans for the construction of mysterious megastructures. Archaeologists working in Saudi Arabia and Jordan say they have discovered the oldest known architectural plans.

According to a new study published Wednesday in the scientific journal PLOS One, “extremely accurate images” etched into the stone slabs detail huge structures used to herd wild animals such as gazelles into enclosures where entire herds could be slaughtered.

As reported by CNN, Stone Age hunting traps date back to around 9,000 years and are known as kites because of their shape. Ancient traps were first discovered in the deserts of the Middle East in the 1920s by aircraft pilots who noticed the striking landscape shapes.

Long converging walls, ranging in length from hundreds of meters to 5 kilometers, made it possible to drive animals into a large paddock surrounded by many holes up to 4 meters deep. Some of the desert structures, known as “desert kites” because of their shape, were the largest structures created at the time they were built in human history.

“These structures are so big. When you are on site, in the field, it is difficult to understand how they are built, what is the layout and shape,” says archaeologist Wael Abu Azizeh.

More than 6,000 prehistoric structures of this kind have been found throughout the Middle East and Central Asia, and they are most numerous in what is now northern Saudi Arabia, southern Syria, and eastern Jordan. However, this archaeological phenomenon has been little studied.

The precise drawings of the massive structures suggested that the people who built and used the traps had advanced and sophisticated knowledge of perceived space and were capable of processing complex spatial information.

“In terms of cognitive development, this is absolutely, absolutely amazing,” the scientists say.

In a recent study, archaeologists reported the discovery of two engraved slabs found in 2015 in Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Abu Azizeh is part of a team that unearthed one of the artifacts at a former settlement in the Jibal al-Khashabiyah region of Jordan, home to eight ancient hunting pens.

He said he realized “within seconds” that the markings made on the 80-centimeter-long stone, believed to be 7,000 years old, depicted a nearby mega-structure.

His colleagues in Saudi Arabia unearthed a larger engraved stone in the Jabal al-Zilliyat region, which was almost 4 meters long. The slab depicted two different structures that were only 120 meters apart. It is believed that the engraving was made 8000 years ago.

The study showed that the shape, location and proportions of the engraving corresponded to the real remains of the structures. The images also corresponded to the cardinal directions – north, east, south and west. The engraving, found in Saudi Arabia, was made on a scale of approximately 1:175, which means that the real “desert kites” were 175 times larger than on the plan. The “kite” in Jordan was 425 times larger than schematically depicted on another slab found.

“The engraving is surprisingly realistic and accurate, and, moreover, is made to scale,” the study says.

The only exception was a large-scale image of deep pits – circles on stones – into which animals must have been sent before slaughter. Abu Azizeh says they would be barely visible if reproduced to scale, and the exaggerated size may have indicated the importance of the pits as places where animals were actually killed.

While older carvings exist in Europe believed to represent maps, and other, cruder depictions of “kites” for hunting have been discovered, these two engraved slabs are the oldest known drawings made to scale. Not much is known about the people who made the ancient structures, which would likely have been a major undertaking requiring the collective effort and investment of a large group. “Kites”, which were sometimes organized in chains, allowed ancient communities to hunt large numbers of animals at once.