'Unique' ritual hunting site that is 9,000-years-old unearthed by expert archaeologists

dailystar.co.uk:

discovered a 9,000-year-old ritualistic shrine deep in the Jordanian desert.The discovery is thought to be the earliest known large human-built structure in world.The ritual complex was found in a Neolithic campsite near large structures known as "desert kites" or mass traps.The Stone Age shrine site that has been unearthed features carved stone figures, an altar and a miniature model of a large-scale hunting trap.Wael Abu-Azziza, a Jordanian archaeologist and co-director of the project, said: "The site is unique, first because of its preservation state."It's 9,000 years old and everything was almost intact."The mass traps are believed to have been used to corral wild gazelles for slaughter thousands of years ago.Similar structures of two or more stone walls, some that are several kilometres long, have been found in deserts across Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and Kazakhstan.The teams of researchers have also found campsites with circular dwellings and large numbers of gazelle bones.The site was discovered inside a larger campsite by a joint French-Jordanian team called the South Eastern Badia Archaeological (SEBA) Project last October.A statement by the SEBA Project said: "The nearby desert kites in Jibal al-Khashabiyeh in Jordan are the earliest large-scale human-built structures worldwide known to date."The French-Jordanian researchers added that the shrine "sheds an entire new light on the symbolism, artistic expression as well as spiritual culture of these hitherto unknown Neolithic populations".The decade-old research project aims to study "the first pastoral nomadic societies as well as the evolution of specialised subsistence strategies".The French ambassador to Jordan, Veronique Vouland-Aneini, hailed the "outcome.