Researchers think the mustatils scattered throughout the region were built about 7000 years ago for rituals and processions, and that they may have been part of a Neolithic cult of cattle. Archaeological evidence has been found of a cattle cult in the south of Arabia about 900 years later, Kennedy said, and the mustatils may have been an early expression of that belief it may also be that some mustatils were built to establish territorial claims on valuable pasturage for herds. They’re usually built on bedrock, often on rocky outcrops above the desert, but also in mountains and in relatively low-lying areas.Īncient rock drawings show herds of cattle that must have been integral to the subsistence of the Neolithic people in the region, and Kennedy and Thomas suspect the mustatils were part of an ancient “cattle cult” that celebrated the animals. Some of the ancient structures are more than 1,500 feet long, but comparatively narrow, and they’re often clustered together. The research is funded by the Royal Commission for AlUla, which has been established by the government of Saudi Arabia to preserve the heritage of the AlUla region in the northwest of the country, where many mustatils are found. “There must have been a great level of communication over a very big area, because how they were constructed was communicated to people,” lead author Hugh Thomas, an archaeologist at the same university, said. AAKSA and Royal Commission for AlUla/Antiquity so perhaps it’s the same ritual belief or understanding.” The "head" of a mustatil consists of a larger wall of stones and contains a small niche or chamber researchers have found animal bones in at least one of the chambers, which suggests it was used to make sacrificial animal offerings.
These things are found over 200,000 square kilometers, and they’re all very similar in shape.
“We are talking about over 1,000 mustatils. “We think of them as a monumental landscape,” said Melissa Kennedy, an archaeologist at the University of Western Australia in Perth and an author of the study.
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