Mysterious structures found in Syrian desert

Rossella Lorenzi, DiscoveryNews, 26-06-2012

An ancient landscape of stone circles, alignments and possible tombs lies out in the Syrian Desert, according to a Royal Ontario Museum archaeologist who has dubbed the mysterious structures “Syria’s Stonehenge.” “These enigmatic arrangements are not especially imposing, they are not megaliths or anything like that, but they are very intriguing and clearly deliberately aligned,” Robert Mason of Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum told Discovery News.

Uncovered in 2009 near the monastery of Deir Mar Musa (Saint Moses the Abyssinian) some 50 miles north of Damascus, the strange features are likely to remain a desert mystery since the conflict tearing apart the Middle Eastern nation is preventing archaeologists from investigating the site. Analysis of fragments of stone tools scattered in the area may date the formations to the Neolithic Period or early Bronze Age– 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. According to Mason, the stones are arranged to stand out from the empty landscape. “There is nothing that seems to exhibit evidence of occupation – no houses or occupation at all. This is unusual for the Neolithic in that typically people lived where they buried their dead and worshipped,” Mason said.

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