Archeologists reported recently that hundreds of stone structures dating back thousands of years have been discovered in the Western Sahara. The structures are in all sizes and shapes, and archaeologists aren’t sure what they were used for or when they were created. As reported in several news outlets, between 2002 and 2009, archaeologists worked in the field surveying the landscape and doing some excavation in the part of Western Sahara that is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. The result of their excavations and surveys has been published in a book “The Archaeology of Western Sahara: A Synthesis of Fieldwork, 2002 to 2009” (Oxbow Books, 2018).
About 75 percent of the Western Saharan territory, including most of the coastline, is controlled by Morocco, while 25 percent is controlled by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and this territory in Africa has been little explored in the past as before 1991, the two governments were in a state of war.
The archeologist state that the archaeological map of Western Sahara remains almost blank as there has been very limited amount of work done in that area. The editors of the book, Joanne Clarke, a senior lecturer at the University of East Anglia, and Nick Brooks, an independent researcher state that people living in the area know of the stone structures, and some work has been done by Spanish researchers on rock art in Western Sahara.
The stone structures are designed in a wide variety of ways. Some are shaped like crescents, others form circles, some are in straight lines, some in rectangular shapes that look like a platform; some structures consist of rocks that have been piled up into a heap. And some of the structures use a combination of these designs. For instance, one structure has a mix of straight lines, stone circles, a platform and rock piles that altogether form a complex about 2,066 feet (630 meters) long, the archaeologists noted in the book.
Though the archaeologists are unsure of the purpose of many of the structures, they said some of them may mark the location of graves. Little excavation has been done on the structures, and archaeologists have found few artifacts that can be dated using a radiocarbon method. Among the few excavated sites are two “tumuli” (heaps of rock) that contain human burials dating back around 1,500 years as reported in Live Science.
Researchers suggest that Western Sahara was once a wetter place that could sustain more animal life than it does today. Archaeologists documented rock art showing images of cattle, giraffe, oryx and Barbary sheep while environmental researchers found evidence for lakes and other water sources that dried up thousands of years ago.
Currently, there are security problems in the region and as a result fieldwork cannot go in uninterrupted and at this point has stopped. In 2013, the terrorist group al-Qaeda which operates in the desert regions near Western Sahara, kidnapped two Spanish aid workers at a refugee camp in Tindouf, Algeria, just across the border from Western Sahara. While the Sahrawi people and Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic strongly oppose the terrorist group, it’s extremely difficult for authorities to effectively patrol the desert areas where the stone structures are located.