While Syria has certainly made headlines for the brutality of its current regime, 10,000 year old ruins have been found in the Syrian desert.
10,000-Year-Old Ruins Have Been Found in the Syrian Desert
Due to the country’s instability and constant violence, archaeologists were not able to explore the 10,000 year old ancient ruins until now. According to Fox News, Fragments of stone tools, stone circles and lines on the ground, and even evidence of tombs appear to lie in the desert near the ancient monastery of Deir Mar Musa, 50 miles north of Damascus, in what archaeologist Robert Mason of the Royal Ontario Museum describes as “Syria’s Stonehenge.”
“What it looked like was a landscape for the dead and not for the living,” Mason said.
Ruins have been found in the Syrian desert thanks to Mason, who discovered the ancient ruins in 2009. The monastery, called the Monastery of Saint Moses the Abyssinian, was built in the late 4th or early 5th century and, according to Mason, contains several frescoes from the 11th and 12th century depicting Christian saints and Judgment Day. He told the audience at Harvard University’s Semitic Museum that he believes it was originally a Roman watchtower that was partially destroyed by an earthquake and then repaired.
However, the ruins appear not be as old as the ancient tools Mason discovered earlier, as they may date back to the Neolithic Period or early Bronze Age, 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.
10,000-Year-Old Ruins Have Been Found in the Syrian Desert.
