Desert Kites and Stone Circles (with .kml file)
Description
An arid land, known as the Syrian Desert, is covering a large part of the Middle East. This harsh environment is characterized by huge lava fields, the “harraat”. If we observe them from space, we discover that they are crossed by some stone structures, the “desert kites”, which were the Neolithic traps for the game. Several stone circles, with radial structure inside, are visible too, as many "Stonehenge" dispersed in the desert landscape. Like the famous English site, some of them could have been used as ancient solar observatories. We can analyze their orientations with sunrise and sunset directions, using a freely available software which works on satellite maps, to determine if some alignments exist. In this dataset the reader can find a .kml file with the position of some 'kites' and stone circles. In a folder, some images from ACME Mapper are given of these prehistoric structures. Some .pdf file are also added, where the reader can find supplementary information.