00:00We all grew up believing that Stonehenge is the world's most ancient observatory,
00:05but now it has some serious competition for the title.
00:08Nabta Playa was built more than 2,000 miles away in southern Egypt
00:13and thousands of years before Stonehenge and even the pyramids of Giza.
00:19In 1973, a Bedouin guide stumbled upon a strange group of huge stone formations
00:26while crossing the Sahara Desert. He led American archaeologist Fred Wendorf to the site,
00:32located about 60 miles from the Nile. Wendorf's friend and colleague claims the team found the
00:39stones while stopping for a bathroom break in the desert. Either way, what they found changed history.
00:46At first, Wendorf thought the stone structures were just natural formations, but then it hit him.
00:52This area was once a lake, meaning no natural rocks should even be there.
00:58He kept coming back to the site for decades, and by the early 1990s,
01:02his team finally uncovered a circle of stones that seemed to line up with the stars in a way no one
01:08could explain. After seven long years of trying to crack the mystery of the site, Wendorf reached out
01:15to an expert in archaeoastronomy. They study how ancient people used the stars.
01:20One evening, while the expert sat in the cool desert sand staring at the stones,
01:26he realized that they formed a pattern radiating outward from a massive burial mound.
01:32One by one, as they dug into the sediment, the buried megaliths started lining up like spokes on a
01:38wheel. The team had already used radiocarbon dating to test samples from fire hearths and tamarisk
01:44wood roofing found inside the stone circle. Nabta Playa had dozens of standing stones,
01:50all a few feet tall. Some of them lined up exactly with the sunrise on special days,
01:56and others matched up with bright stars in the sky. Inside the big circle, there were six special
02:03stones that may have been used for rituals or marking important times of the year. Around them,
02:09twenty-nine standing stones might have worked like a simple calendar to help people know when it was
02:14time for something important, like the summer solstice, the longest day of the year.
02:20When the sun rose in just the right spot, it was a sign that the rainy season was coming. The stone
02:26circle once aligned with the brightest stars in the northern sky, Arcturus, Sirius, and Alpha Centauri.
02:33Some stones even pointed to the constellation Orion. By tracing Arcturus' movement across the sky,
02:39they figured out that it matched perfectly with the circle around 4800 BCE. That means it was the
02:46oldest astronomical site ever discovered. And the people of Nabta Playa may have been watching the
02:52stars thousands of years before telescopes were even invented. It looks like it had a huge meaning
02:59for people living and traveling through the desert. Over 10,000 years ago, the long cold and dry ice
03:06age that lasted for tens of thousands of years was finally fading away. Northern Africa got massive
03:14monsoons and rains that filled up seasonal lakes. So, parts of the desert turned into short-lived oases.
03:21For the nomadic people who roamed this harsh land, these summer rains were everything. Their entire way of
03:28life revolved around cattle. When archaeologists opened the central tomb at Nabta Playa, they dug up
03:34cattle bones and even a massive rock carved into the shape of a cow. The people who built it used the
03:41stars to guide them and find hidden watering holes like Nabta Playa, which likely held water for about
03:47four months a year, starting with the summer monsoons. But there was no North Star back then, so instead,
03:54they navigated using bright stars and the way the sky seemed to spin in circles above them. When the
04:00lakes were full, the standing stones would be partly submerged, and from the western shore,
04:05you would see the reflection of the stars on the dark water. Nabta Playa is way less famous than
04:12Stonehenge, perhaps because its stones were buried and the famous site in England was open to visitors
04:18for thousands of years. Sadly, when Nabta Playa did become famous, some tourists ruined parts of it
04:24by moving stones around, which messed up the ancient star alignments. To protect it, the authorities moved
04:31everything to a museum, where people can see the stones and the carved cow statue without damaging them.
04:37The Egyptian observatory isn't the only construction similar to Stonehenge. It has versions that were used for
04:43different purposes from Germany and France to the US and the Andes in northern Peru. This last one is
04:51actually one of the oldest big structures ever built in this region. The circular plaza is made of two giant
04:57stone walls arranged in a ring. It was likely used for ceremonies and gatherings. Scientists have carbon
05:04dated it to be about 4,750 years old, which means it was built before the Great Pyramids of Egypt and Stonehenge.
05:13The plaza had two entrances and a special layer of clay, soil, gravel and charcoal underneath. It was
05:20carefully planned and built. Archaeologists also found ceramic pieces, quartz crystals and gemstones at
05:27the site, so it was definitely a special place. People visited it for centuries, but at some point it was
05:34sealed off, probably because of changing beliefs and traditions. The most recent discovery was the
05:41remains of a large timber circle roughly the same age and with parallels to Stonehenge, all the way up in
05:48Denmark. This open-air structure was likely part of a special area where prehistoric people from the
05:55late Neolithic and early Bronze Age gathered for rituals and ceremonies. The circle was made up of 45
06:02giant wooden posts, forming a huge ring about 100 feet wide. The wood is gone now, but scientists
06:09believe tall timbers once stood in the holes and created an impressive wood henge. No one knows
06:16exactly what these circles were used for, but archaeologists have found animal bones and food
06:21remains at similar sites. So people probably used to gather there for feasts and rituals.
06:27In 2024, scientists found two ancient stone circles from the Neolithic period in Dartmoor National Park in
06:34England. Some archaeologists believe they might form a sacred ark. Many of Dartmoor's stone structures
06:41were built in a curved shape on the high ground in the center of the area. A long time ago, Dartmoor was
06:47covered in forests, so people may have used the high ground as important markers. One of the newly found
06:54circles fits inside this ark, but the other one is outside of it, to the north. This could have been an entrance
07:00point into the ark. There's also a raised bank of earth near the stones, which looks similar to other
07:06famous Neolithic sites, like the Ring of Brodgar in Scotland and Stonehenge itself. This means the
07:13people who built these circles may have visited Stonehenge or been inspired by it. Archaeologists in Oman
07:21found ancient stone monuments called Tralyn, which got the nickname Arabian Stonehenge.
07:27They were finished about 2,000 years ago, but no one knows for sure who built them or why.
07:33Scientists also found stone hand axes that are incredibly old, between 300,000 and 1.3 million
07:41years old, from the time when the first humans left Africa. At another site in central Oman, archaeologists
07:48discovered a Neolithic tomb from around 5,000 to 4,600 BCE. There are two chambers with the bones of
07:57dozens of people inside beneath a giant megalithic structure. Nearby, they also discovered rock carvings
08:04that were made by people who lived in the area. And then there is another Stonehenge look-alike,
08:11this time in Saudi Arabia, that was used as an apartment complex thousands of years ago.
08:17Archaeologists discovered a total of 345 stone circles by looking at aerial photos of a lava field.
08:25Each circle is between 13 to 26 feet and has at least one large standing stone in the middle.
08:32These structures still have remains of stone walls and doorways.
08:37Stone circles like Stonehenge are often linked to ceremonies and rituals, but scientists say that
08:42many early houses were actually built in round shapes, and rectangular homes only became common
08:48much later in history. That's it for today! So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the
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