Archaeologists have discovered a 4.500-year-old highway network lined with well-preserved ancient tombs in Saudi Arabia. The excavation was carried out during a wide-ranging investigation last year, and researchers from the University of Western Australia made the discovery possible.?
The findings by the archaeologists have been published in the Holocene journal in December.?
The team had conducted excavation, ground survey, aerial surveys with the help of helicopter and examination of satellite imagery.
"The people, who live in these areas, have known about them for thousands of years. But I think it wasn't really known until we got satellite imagery that just how widespread they are," researcher Matthew Dalton told CNN.?
According to reports, the tombs are either in the shape of pendants or rings. The pendant tombs have 'beautiful tails' and the ring tombs have a cairn surrounded by a wall of up to two meters in height.?
Dalton said that the funeral avenues he saw from a helicopter ran for hundreds, "maybe even thousands of kilometres." He added that the same pathways were frequently travelled by individuals going along today's main roadways.
The researchers used radiocarbon dating to find a concentrated group of samples dated back to between 2600 and 2000 BC. The team found around 18,000 tombs along the funeral avenues.?
"These tombs are 4,500 years old, and they're still standing to their original height, which is really unheard of. So, I think that's what particularly marks Saudi Arabia out from the rest of the region -- just the level of preservation is unbelievable," said researcher Melissa Kennedy.? ? ? ?
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