Category Archives: The Richat Structure

Ancient Agricultural Structures

Not only are there ancient burials within the Richat Structure, there are also many unique structures that appear to be agricultural in nature. These structures appear to be constructed with dry walls made of stone. It is also possible the walls were made of mud brick that could have been created when the area was humid and water was plentiful thousands of years ago. Many of these structures appear to be ancient animal pens and farms. What do you think? Enjoy!

Animal Pens

It is likely these structures, which appear to be animal pens, are used by the Bedouins to rest their animals as they travel the Richat Structure today. What do you think?

Ancient Farms

You will see that in these photos, ancient walls have been covered by years of blowing sand. The farms appear to be situated on once fertile ground next to a dry wadi.

Troves of Evidence – An Ancient Burial Ground

The Richat Structure may seem visually dull and unappealing to some but if you look closely, you will find that the structure has a lot of secrets waiting to be revealed. Before now, there hasn’t been much talk of the purpose and importance of the structure to ancient peoples of the Western Sahara. Before now, there hasn’t been much reason to really jump into the topic because, well, the structure is large and imposing and data cannot be easily found regarding its history. It took me two years of scouring the surface of the structure for evidence to get to a point where I felt comfortable sharing my findings as I wanted to ensure I had enough proof to show a pattern of behavior. And boy, have I found it.

I have determined that the Richat Structure was used by ancient groups of people as a place to inter their dead. I have found hundreds of burial mounds and cairns, all in different states of preservation. Some are perfectly preserved while others appear to have been scattered into a pile of rocks. All appear to be constructed of rocks found along the surface. Most are situated near wadis. We’ll talk more about this later on. Some are what I would call large structures (approximately 70 feet across from outer edge to outer edge) and others are small (approximately 10 feet or less). If you map the structures all along the Richat, you will find that they follow the circular pattern of the concentric circles the Richat is made of. However, I have also found many burials that are on the northern outskirts of the structure which leads me to believe that the entire area surrounding the Richat, not just the Richat itself, was used for burials.

Many of the burials appear to be a single mound of stone but others appear to be constructed with a central mound surrounded by a single ring of rocks. Some structures appear to have thicker outside ring walls than others.

Some are single stone rings, others are crescent shaped with openings oriented to the west and some of the most recent I have found are what I would call hook shaped.

Others appear to have wings!

It is my theory that the smaller crescent shaped burials are the most ancient of them all. I found hundreds close together in a north/south orientation along what appeared to be an ancient lake bed approximately 5 miles long. I found hook and horseshoe shaped structures intermingled with the crescent structures. I also found several small single rings but no mound and ring structures in this area. It will take years and years of research and archeological excavations of these structures in order to understand their age and meaning behind the different styles of burials.

The Richat Structure. The what?

Have you ever heard of the Richat Structure? No? Right, well, neither had I until 2018 when my cousin sent me a YouTube video to watch about the structure and its possible relation to the lost city of Atlantis. I was intrigued right away by the shape, the size, and the location of the structure. Initially, I was baffled and shocked that I had never heard of or seen the structure before. How did my western education miss this? After a bit of research, I found there were no formal publications that delved into the history or geology of the structure. Again, how did western academia miss this?

To give academia a bit of credit, the location of the structure is in a volatile part of Africa. So volatile that archaeologists have not been allowed past what are called “Free Zones”, along Morocco and the disputed territory of Western Sahara, for fear of kidnapping or worse. The structure is located in central Mauritania, near the town of Ouadane, in the Western Sahara. Ouadane itself is on UNESCO’s World Heritage list as the town was created to serve as a trading post and religious center for those traveling through the Sahara in the 11th and 12th centuries. With that in mind, I had a hard time believing that the Richat Structure had no significance to past cultures living near by or traveling through the area. This is where I began my adventure of exploring the structure using GIS technology, mainly Google Earth.

The physical properties of the Richat are evident and obvious to an extent. The structure itself has a diameter of 25 miles. It can be seen from viewing the structure from above that it is circular in shape and is comprised of concentric circles. This is one piece of physical evidence as to why those seeking the lost city of Atlantis believe the Richat is Atlantis itself as per Plato’s description. It is also evident, from 100 miles above the surface, that the structure is surrounded by plateaus and mountains to the North. The southern end of the structure is covered by blown sand. As you move closer, you can begin to make out many wadis (dry channels except for in the rainy season) some small and some very large. These appear to have cut deep canyons through the plateaus to the North over thousands of years. No doubt these wadis held more water thousands of years ago when the Western Sahara was a green and luscious landscape. Taking that into consideration, you can begin to imagine large wadis of water flowing around the structure. It is also apparent that there are large areas of white sediment covering the center and southeastern edges of the structure. This sediment is actually most likely salt. If this is correct, then analyzing ground layers should be able to prove that these locations were once covered by the ocean. As you move ever closer to the surface, you can begin to see fault lines. Many and many fault lines. This is evidence of tectonic activity and very volatile tectonic activity from the size, length, and number of fault lines running through the structure. This lends itself to the theory that the structure itself was formed by a volcanic uplift which hardened and then eroded over hundreds of thousands of years.

The physical evidence can be used to begin to date the structure and begin to provide a timeline of human activity within the structure. For instance, 11,000 to 10,000 years ago the Sahara desert was green and luscious with many plants and animals. No doubt humans would have settled in or around the structure, especially with its apparent large wadis. However, between 8,000 and 4,500 years ago, the once green landscape turned barren and arid. Humans would have still traveled through this area during this time but probably not to create settlements in numbers that would have been seen just 1,000 years before.

Once you begin to dissect the structure and open your eyes to see past the sand, you begin to gain an understanding of the history of how the structure was created and also how it must have looked in ancient times. Moving even closer and closer to the surface, one might be lucky enough to spot something unique. For the past two years, I have spent my time searching for and documenting the location of hundreds of what appear to be ancient burial mounds and cairns. In another post, I will dive more into the different types and styles of burials and begin to theorize about the importance of the structure to ancient African cultures of the Western Sahara. Thanks for taking a look and stick with me for more ancient evidence!