Tagged “iron-age”
HIGH WONDERAwwam Temple (Mahram Bilqis)
How did Sabaean builders, working over a millennium before Islam, quarry, dress, and raise eight-plus-meter monolithic limestone pillars and a precisely coursed oval wall three-quarters of a kilometer around — and how much of the still sand-buried temple has yet to be uncovered?
Sabaean kingdom, from at least the 7th century BCE; in continuous use until the 4th century CE · near Marib, Marib Governorate, YemenAdded July 2026
HIGH WONDERThe Great Dam of Marib
How did Sabaean and Himyarite engineers, working with packed earth, dressed stone, and Iron Age tools, build — and then rebuild, again and again, for over a thousand years — a dam and sluice system precise enough to turn a stretch of Arabian desert into one of antiquity's richest oases, before it finally, catastrophically failed for good?
c. 8th century BCE, rebuilt and enlarged through the 570s CE · Marib, Marib Governorate, YemenAdded July 2026
HIGH WONDERPlain of Jars
Who carved thousands of stone jars — the largest several tonnes each — from quarries kilometres away, moved and set them across some ninety hilltop sites, and used them in a mortuary tradition, all while leaving behind no written record and no certain descendants?
c. 500 BCE – 500 CE, Iron Age (some jars possibly earlier) · Xieng Khouang Plateau, LaosAdded July 2026
Zorats Karer (Karahunj)
Were the smooth bored holes in dozens of these standing stones deliberate sightlines onto the sky, or features of a burial and settlement site whose astronomical meaning has been read into it after the fact — and how old is the site really?
Middle Bronze Age to Iron Age (mainstream necropolis dating); much older observatory claims (c. 5500 BCE) are disputed and not accepted by most archaeologists · Near Sisian, Syunik Province, ArmeniaAdded July 2026