David Kennedy at the University of Western Australia in Perth is an armchair archaeologist. He has just found thousands of ancient stone structures in the Middle East that are reminiscent of the Nazca lines of Peru - simply by using Google Earth and vintage aerial photographs. New Scientist takes a virtual tour.

Grounded kite

Using Google Earth and aerial photographs taken in the 1920s, Kennedy uncovered over 2000 "kites" throughout the Arabian peninsula. These stony structures, each with a number of graceful "tails", were used as animal traps. Gazelle and oryx were funnelled between the tails towards the kite's "head". Kennedy says that once the head was packed with animals, the tail was blocked and the hunters killed the game. Found in Jordan, the head of this structure - the Safawi kite - is around 200 metres across, and its tails are 600, 900 and 1300 metres long.

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© Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East

Stone wheels

Originally thought to be houses, these stone wheels are now believed to have a spiritual purpose. According to David Thomas at LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia, wheels were left by ancient cultures throughout the world, from the Atacama desert in Chile to the Sahara in northern Africa.

Wheels found in the Arabia peninsula are between 20 and 70 metres in diameter. They are usually found in isolation, but sometimes occur in groups. The 13 wheels in this photograph were discovered around the Azraq oasis in Jordan.

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© Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East
Pendants

These pendants are teardrop-shaped tombs. Kennedy suspects that visitors to a tomb would add stones to the pendant tail to commemorate an honoured individual, increasing its length. The length of these tails sometimes exceeds 30 metres.

The Amra pendant pictured here is in Jordan. It is 70 metres long because it is made of several tombs, with many people buried along the tail. Unlike many countries in the Middle East, Jordan allows low-level aerial photography and archaeological fieldwork. Close-up analysis of this site has revealed that Greek letters have been carved into one of the stones built into the pendant's head.

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© Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East
Mysterious walls

A "kite" with a 250-metre-wide head and tails that are each around 500 metres long has been overlaid here by a hooked and squiggly wall. While the kite - a common structure in these parts - is thought to have served as an animal trap, the purpose of the walls is unknown. "They can best be described as a sort of landscape art," says Kennedy.

Atop the wall is a campsite with pottery of the late Roman period. This suggests the kite and wall is pre-Roman.

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© Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East
Keyhole tombs and trumpet tombs

Saudi Arabia gives foreign archaeologists no access to its ancient sites. But Kennedy has confirmed that the country contains thousands of stony pendant-shaped tombs like those seen in the more accessible Jordan and Yemen. He has also found hundreds of keyhole and trumpet-shaped tombs, which are seen nowhere else. "Keyholes are strikingly well set out," he says. Their heads are seemingly precise circles and the triangles are straight lines extending over 50 metres.

This group of eight tombs, found 2 kilometres north-west of Al-Khuraybah, spans 180 metres. The longest individual tomb is 54 metres from base to top.

The prehistoric herders who lived in what is now known as Saudi Arabia and Jordan would have shared a common ancestral tradition, says Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, Australia. The different tombs shapes, however, suggest unique local traditions.

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© USGS/Digital Globe/Google