While archaeology primarily deals with artifacts found beneath the earth through extensive digs and excavations, aerial images have revealed huge historic structures in the desert of Saudi Arabia. Google earth’s images of the lava fields named the Harrat Khaybar on which these structures were built are the first bird’s eye images of the structures, since permission to fly above Saudi Arabia has been tightly restricted for years. From the ground, as Dr. Abdullah Al-Saed will testify, the formations look like simple, low stone walls. When he first saw the structures, he contacted Dr. Kennedy, an archeologist who spent the next decade recording 400 structures in the Harrat Kaybar, which he referred to as “gates” because of the semblance they had to a rectangular gate between two posts.  While archeologists do not know the exact purpose of these gates, they have found them intriguing because the barren lava fields were thought, for a long time, to be “devoid of human impact”. This remnant of human life and culture on the plains is evidence to scientists that the climate of these deserts was, at one point in time, quite different, perhaps even hospitable to human life and community.

The climate of a region and its natural resources directly affects the culture and behaviors of the groups of people who live there. Thus, the artifacts that people leave behind, the man made creations of a culture, can indicate what the climate and resources were in this area when the culture populated it. While the average rainfall in Saudi Arabia has not exceeded 20mm a month for the past hundred years, the magnitude of the structures suggests that at one period of time, there was enough water in the area for humans to exert tremendous effort in constructing them. In addition, the permanent walls suggest that there were established, non-nomadic communities of people living in the deserts.

 

“Average Monthly Temperature and Rainfall for Saudi Arabia from 1901-2015”. Country Historical Climate. The World Bank Group.

http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/index.cfm?page=country_historical_climate&ThisCCode=SAU

St. Fleur, Nicholas.”Hundreds of Mysterious Stone ‘Gates’ Found in Saudi Arabia’s Desert”. The New York Times. 19 October 2017. Accessed 30 October 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/19/science/saudi-arabia-gates-google-earth.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=20&pgtype=sectionfront