A team of Jordanian and French archaeologists has announced they have found a roughly 9000-year-old shrine at a remote Neolithic site in Jordan’s eastern desert.
The unique ritual complex was discovered in a Neolithic campsite near large structures known as “desert kites,” the earliest large-scale human built structures worldwide. The structures, which consists of two or more long stone walls converging toward an enclosure, are believed to have been used to corral wild gazelles for slaughter.
This discovery constitutes a unique testimony of a complex ritual arrangement, dating back to the Neolithic period. “The discovered installation is not only unique due to its exceptional state of preservation, but also due to the fact that it sheds an entire new light on the symbolism, artistic expression as well as spiritual culture of these hitherto unknown Neolithic populations,” the researchers said in a statement.
The team included archaeologists from Jordan’s Al Hussein Bin Talal University and the French Institute of the Near East.
