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.