The Oldest Known Astronomical Observatory on Earth
This mysterious 7,000-year-old stone circle is now known as the Stonehenge of the Sahara.
3,000 years before the sarsens of Stonehenge were arranged, another sacred circle of megaliths were assembled in prehistoric Egypt. The stones of Nabta Playa are so ancient that the pyramids of Giza weren’t even a vision in a pharaoh’s dream when they rose more than seven millennia ago. Indeed, it would be another 2,500 years before the pyramids of Giza were constructed.
Egypt may now be mostly a vast expanse of desert sands, but during the Neolithic period, it was far lusher and greener - more of a savanna than a desert. Pre-dynastic Egyptian culture was incubated in verdant valleys where hunter-gatherers had at least partly turned into farmers. After the melting of the last Ice Age, the region had become much more habitable.
Rather more recently, in the early 1990s, archaeologist Fred Wendorf and his research team unearthed a circle of stones at a site 60 miles from the banks of the Nile. It took Wendorf seven more years until he figured out what the stones' positioning may mean and called J. McKim Malville, whose expertise was in archaeoastronomy of the American Southwest. Malville noticed that the megalithic structure was designed to line up with the brightest stars visible from Earth. The monolithic stones of Nabta Playa radiate outwards and form a circle that was probably meant to align with astronomical events (such as the solstices) and particular stars, not unlike Stonehenge. It’s now recognized as the oldest known astronomical observatory on Earth.
By 1998, the mystical circle of stones had been dubbed “Stonehenge of the Sahara.” It was created from upright slabs - two sets aligned from north to south, and the other two sets positioned to create a direct line of sight towards the horizon during the summer solstice. Stars have shifted in the sky since then, but the archaeologists found that the structure was originally meant to align with the positions of the stars Arcturus and Sirius, as well as the Alpha Centauri star system and the Orion’s Belt constellation.
