The Sahara Hid a Message Older Than the Written Word

Bright Side

On the eastern edge of the Sahara Desert, researchers found a mysterious stone circle. It’s kind of like Africa’s version of Stonehenge, but possibly even older. This thing might be a message from before written language even existed. We’re talking about people who used stones to track the stars and mark time thousands of years ago. It shows just how advanced ancient humans really were, even in one of the harshest places on Earth. If you're into ancient mysteries and mind-blowing discoveries, you’ve got to hear this story!  Credit: Lye-leaching Stone at America's Stonehenge: By Richard Haddad, CC BY 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ , https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lye-leaching_Stone_at_America%27s_Stonehenge.jpg Hot Desert Biome – Terrain: By artfromheath, CC BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, https://skfb.ly/oEZoo New evidence for Neolithic occupation in north-west Arabia: By tandfonline.com, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/figure/10.1080/00758914.2024.2350826?scroll=top&needAccess=true CC BY-SA 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ : Megaliths Aswan Nubia museum: By Raymbetz, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Megaliths_Aswan_Nubia_museum.JPG Calendar aswan: By Raymbetz, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Calendar_aswan.JPG CC BY-SA 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/: Ringheiligtum Pömmelte: By Michael Deutsch, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ringheiligtum_P%C3%B6mmelte,_Sachsen-Anhalt_230712.jpg Carnac Alignement de Kermario: By Zairon, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Carnac_Alignement_de_Kermario_17.jpg Animation is created by Bright Side.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV  Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Our Social Media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

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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

08:54video a like and share it with your friends. Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side!

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