Scientists Have Uncovered The History Of The Enormous Prehistoric Patterns Known As “Desert Kites”

Pilots of the British Royal Air Force who were flying over the Middle East in the 1920s first observed what they called “desert kites”—huge designs etched into the rocky terrain that frequently resembled the well-known flying toy.

Since then, archaeologists have argued over the meaning of these enigmas, which have been found in various places and time periods, including Jordan during the Neolithic Period (10, 000–2, 200 B.C.E. ), Israel’s Negev Desert during the Early Bronze Age (3,300–2,100 B.C.E. ), and Armenia during the Middle Bronze Age (2,100–1,550 B.C.E. Some believed they were pillars of culture. Others suggested that they served as animal pens for domestication.

The common theory that the early desert inhabitants used the desert kites as mass hunting traps to dispatch large herds of game at once is supported by three recent peer-reviewed papers. During their flight, the kites forced gazelle and ibex down narrow, wall-lined channels that culminated in enormous pits or abrupt cliffs, trapping and killing the animals. The placement, length, and general design of the kites show a comprehensive understanding of the environment and animal behavior.

The majority of the confirmed desert kite sightings in 2014, according to the Jerusalem Post, were made using Google Earth. Only 30 kites had ever been discovered and 1% of them had been surveyed up to that moment. There are currently about 6,500 known. Such kites were used up until the previous century, according to professors Dani Nadel and Guy Bar-Oz from the University of Haifa, who spoke with Haaretz.

“The Use of Desert Kites as Hunting Mega-Traps” was published in the Journal of World Prehistory in March 2022. The functional data from the study, led by Rémy Crassard, confirms that the kites were employed as hunting traps while also evaluating their social and ecological effects. The article “New Arabian desert kites and putative proto-kites,” written by Olivier Barge and published in the journal of archaeological science in April, describes early “open kites” discovered over the previous two years in Saudi Arabia’s Khaybar region. Along with 200 other northwest Arabian kites, Rebecca Repper oversaw August’s “Kites of AlUla County and the ‘arrat’Uwayri” remote sensing research project.Repper claimed that the recent wave of papers “suggest a larger interest and focus on these structures given the enhanced availability of satellite photography.” Since 2018, Repper has been a part of the Aerial Archaeology in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Project, which is supported by the Royal Commission for AlUla.

Each paper’s authors engaged in communication throughout their individual investigations. Along with the Khaybar Longue Durée Initiative, which Crassard is co-directing, Repper’s is just one of the Saudi government’s funded projects. This project is “part of a larger scheme to sustainably develop this culturally rich and ancient territory.” Repper said that the Global Kites Project, which has “fundamentally advanced” the kite discussion, includes Crassard and Barge.

To follow how hunters improved the method over time and reacted to shifting animal migratory and population trends, which mass hunting itself altered, archaeologists plan to continue precisely dating each kite. In order to determine which animals were hunted and why, they also intend to dig home and agricultural structures from corresponding historical periods.This will help us better grasp the values of these ancient populations and how hunting fit into their society, according to Repper.