Enigmatic stone structures of Saudi Arabia reveal ancient customs

The mustatils, prehistoric monuments made of sandstone walls that are found in northwest Saudi Arabia, have recently revealed a piece of new information about ancient human social practices. 

A new study was published on March 15 in PLOS ONE by Melissa Kennedy of the University of Western Australia, Perth, and her team suggested that mustatils may have been utilized for ritualistic purposes involving the placement of animal offerings, according to recent discoveries in the city of Al-Ula. Kennedy and associates have just finished a significant excavation at a mustatil 55 east of Al-Ula.

260 shards of animal skulls and horns, mostly from domestic cattle but also from domestic goats, gazelles, and small ruminants, were identified by the researchers' examination.

These fragments were largely grouped together around a big upright stone that was thought to be a betyl. The betyl is one of the oldest ones in the Arabian Peninsula, according to radiocarbon dating, and the bones offer some of the earliest proof of the domestication of cattle in northern Arabia.

"The ritual deposition of animal horns and upper cranial element within the mustatil suggests a profound intersection of belief and economic life-ways in the Late Neolithic of Northern Arabia," wrote the researchers.

"The incorporation of these two facets suggests a deeply rooted ideological entanglement, one which was shared over a vast geographic distance, indicating a far more interconnected landscape and culture than had previously been supposed for the Neolithic period in north-west Arabia,” they added, as reported in the release.

The fact that our investigation found evidence of multiple periods of offerings at the mustatil as well as the grave of an adult male human suggests that the location may have served as a frequent pilgrimage site.

More about Mustatils

Researchers initially became aware of the mustatils in the 1970s. However, there were no other animal bones found during the excavation of one mustatil, which was supported by the Royal Commission for Al-'Ula. These remains are thought to be proof of a hitherto unrecognized cattle cult.

The mustatil and maybe the other structures were constructed between 5300 and 5000 BCE during the Holocene Humid Period, when the region was a grassland subject to regular droughts.