The mystery of desert kites

North of Saudi Arabia and south of Jordan lie thousands of mysterious geometrical structures whose shape, seen from the air, is reminiscent of huge kites. The oldest of these gigantic stone alignments were built around 7,000 BC. Here we have some of the oldest structures in human history, predating the Egyptian pyramids and the spectacular Stonehenge alignments by more than 4,000 years.

Using state-of-the-art technology and determined to shed new light on the little-known Neolithic period, an international team of archaeologists led by Frenchman Rémy Crassard and Franco-Jordanian Wael Abu-Azizeh is attempting to understand who built these structures and why.