Archaeologists have discovered 400 mysterious stone structures on the edge of volcanoes that could be thousands of years old in a remote desert area in Saudi Arabia.
The stone structures- which were found using Google Earth – have been dubbed the ‘gates’ because they appear to look like field gates from above, the Daily Mail reports.
Built across ancient lava domes, some of these strange features are more than four times the length of a football pitch, and experts believe they may be up to 7,000 years old.
David Kennedy of the University of Western Australia said the purpose and age of these structures, found in the Harrat Khaybar region in Saudia Arabia, remains unknown.
“Gates are found almost exclusively in bleak, inhospitable lava fields with scant water or vegetation, places seemingly amongst the most unwelcoming to our species,” he wrote in a paper due to be published in November in the journal Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy.
The gates are “stone-built, the walls roughly made and low”, he said.
Remains of lava flows can be seen on top of some of the gates, suggesting that they are older than some of the lava flows.
