2024-01-10 13:36:55
MADRID, 10 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The oases of the northern Arabian desert were inhabited by sedentary populations in the fourth and third millennium BC, who built immense fortifications to protect them.
A team of scientists from the CNRS – the French public research center – and the AlUla Royal Commission (RCU) has just revealed the remains of a large defensive construction that encloses the Khaybar oasis, north of Medina, one of the longest known from this period. This new walled oasis is, along with Tayma, one of the two largest in Saudi Arabia, the CNRS reported in a statement.
While several walled oases dating back to the Bronze Age had already been documented, this important discovery sheds new light on human occupation in northwestern Arabia and provides a better understanding of the local social complexity during the pre-Islamic period.
Crossing field studies and remote sensing data with architectural studies, the team estimated the original dimensions of the fortifications at 14.5 kilometers in length, between 1.70 and 2.40 meters thick and approximately 5 meters high. Preserved today at just under half of its original length (41 percent, 5.9 km and 74 bastions), this colossal building enclosed a rural and sedentary territory of almost 1,100 hectares. The date of construction of the fortification is estimated between 2250 and 1950 BC. C., based on radiocarbon dating of samples collected during excavations.
While the study confirms that the Khaybar Oasis clearly belonged to a network of walled oases in northwest Arabia, the discovery of this wall also raises questions about why it was built, as well as the nature of the populations who built it, in particular its relations with populations outside the oasis.
This archaeological discovery, the results of which are published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports (JASREP), paves the way for important advances in understanding the prehistoric, pre-Islamic and Islamic past of the northwestern Arabian Peninsula.
?
#Immense #4000yearold #fortifications #discovered #Arabia