#829 El Fossil, Villa de Leyva, Colombia

If you'd asked me if I wanted to go and see some dinosaur bones, I wouldn't have been unexcited, but I wouldn't be sure to go out of my way to get there. Seeing the enormous and very well preserved 'El Fosil' 15 minutes driving or an hour walking out of Villa de Leyva (#986) was enough to make me change my mind. It has an almost complete 110-million-year-old kronosaurus, the most complete one in the world of this prehistoric marine reptile. Without a tail it is 7m, but with the tail it would have been around 12m. It was discovered by local farmers in 1977, and the government wanted to move it, but the locals protested, and it has become their special treasure. 

In the same museum they also have another very complete skeleton of another marine dinosaur, and many dinosaur bones from the pliosaurs, plesiosaurs, and ichthiosaurs, as well as many other fossils common to the area.

Source: www.museoelfosil.com
Lonely Planet Colombia 6th Edition 2012

#835 Yemen Stone Circle, near Zabid, Yemen

One thing it is almost impossible to do is to know about something that the tour guide doesn't know, especially in a country like Yemen. Well, I managed to do that with the help of the Bradt travel guide when I was there. There was a tiny paragraph hidden deep in the Tihana section labelled 'Midamman'. In terms of learning about it, it's not particularly helpful, but at least it helped us to find it. Our guide, Noman, was sceptical, but persisted in asking a few locals until we found one who knew of it. It says:

"The small village of Midamman is located 21km from Zabid along the road to al-Fazah, a stretch of road covered with dense date palm trees. The village of Midamman is not noteworthy except for its connection to 'Yemen Henge', a series of Bronze-Age megaliths long known to the inhabitants of the region, and only recently found by Western archaeologists. The megaliths are a little hard to find -- they stand about 5km outside Midamman, reached by dirt roads heading toward the north."

As you probably know if you have met me or my mother, you would know that stone circles and areas fascinate me. I have done research on stone circles in Morocco (Mzora #860) and visited others in far flung places such as Armenia (Zorats Karer Carahunge #910), the Orkneys (#987) and Colombia near Villa de Leyva (#986), and of course more familiar places like Stone Henge (#905).

Very close to the Red Sea, the basalt and granite rocks, which are around 3m in length (sadly, none still standing), and around 7 tons in weight are said to be from around 3500 B.C. which is significantly older than most other civilizations in the region. The rocks themselves are said to be from the Surat Mountains 60km away and had to be floated across the Red Sea on rafts.

The remains of a male skeleton and three children were found in charred earth near the stones and are thought to be connected to a ritual or commemoration.

"Furthermore, there are many rock drawings in the desert areas adjacent to the Yemeni stone circle in which collectors, hunters, and herders of the period between the fifth and second millennia BC depicted themselves, their weapons, their customs, and their daily life. Hunting featured prominently in the life of these early groups of people. These people differed in appearance from later inhabitants of the region, so it is assumed that they were driven out of their settlements by the expansion of the southern Semitic tribes."  http://nabataea.net/sarabia.html

Source: Yemen (Bradt Travel Guide), Daniel McLaughlin, 2008, p171
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/the-henge-in-yemen/3567150 A tv show that aired discussing the discovery amongst archaeologists.
http://www.stonepages.com/news/archives/000110.html 
http://www.oocities.org/athens/troy/4040/circles.htm -- others in Saudi Arabia

#849 Nazca Lines, Peru

It's very common to say that photos don't do a place justice, but in this case, they really don't. The Nazca lines are one of the most incredible things I've seen, and they can only been seen from the air, but the photos just don't capture the magic. 

Human or alien?

The circa 400AD geogyphs cannot be seen well from the ground, though there is a spot off the Pan-American highway where there is a viewing platform and they can be seen from the surrounding hills. This means that tourist flights zip around the 80km plateau area -- that's the only way to really see them. There is an alien-like man, several birds and insects, a monkey, a spider, a dog, hands, along with zoomorphic geometric designs and other images. They must be several hundred meters in size, and are made by clearing the rock-strewn area so that a clear patch is formed -- the sheer size is impressive, but also the mysteries about how and why they were made. 

The Nazca people were responsible for the ceremonial city of Cahuachi, and also created an impressive aqueduct system in addition to these lines. Despite a severe 1996 earthquake that flattened the modern town of Nazca, and floods in 2007 the dry, windless desert helps to preserve these creations. The difficulty of seeing them also helped preserve them for us to see. They were only "rediscovered" relatively recently, when Peruvian archaeologist Toribio Mejia Xesspe saw them from the surrounding hills in 1927, and new figures are still being discerned from the multitude of lines even now. 

However, whether they were to form pictures for gods in the sky, an observatory, a collection of constellations or negative space in the milky way, or a pathway to places of religious observance, they are truly remarkable!

Monkey

Bird

Spider

Map of Nazca sites

Viewing platform on the ground -- very hard to see anything at all!

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazca_lines

#860 Mzora Stone Circle, Morocco

Big stellae

Stones lying in the grass

When I was a student in Morocco, one of the things I wanted to see the most was the "Cromlech de Mzora", an ancient stone circle that was barely mentioned in the guidebooks, and unheard of by most Moroccans, so I undertook to do a research paper about it for my class there. The only information I found was in French texts (the names of which I also no longer have), and by renting a car to search it out in its tiny village. Unfortunately, the paper has been lost to the relics of no-internet backups, but I still have the photos I took, and the story of how it was to get there. I apologize to the people that quoted it in their academic papers and thank them enormously for the honor they did to quote me at all -- I will try and locate the paper one day and re-type it!

Whole mound and circle

Biggest standing stone - El Uted "The Pointer"

Bricks under the mound

About half way between the small towns of Larache and Asilah, north of the Roman center called Lixus, the Arab village of Souq Tnine de Sidi el-Yamani is the closest place to the ruins. There are modern buildings and homes scattered right next to the ruins, and the stones themselves are in a bad state of disrepair. A small pond has formed inside the mound that was excavated by French scholars.

Edge of circle

Bilingual Stellae - image from a French text --
this is in a Museum and no longer at the site.

View from the top

Stones outside of circle

Side view of circle

Hunks out of stone - from afar

While scattered, fallen and moved, the presence of 167 intact stones from the circle makes this impressive, as does the fact that you are free to wander freely among them. The state that the French Archaeologists left the site in is quite appalling, but its obscurity in Moroccan history books means that most Moroccans are uninterested in visiting it, so it does not see the same number of visitors that such a site would see in Europe, especially considering its size, and thus it is more preserved than it could be.

Entranceway

Hunks out of stone - closeup view

Copied diagram of Mzora from French text -- cited

French text - inside tomb

These two aerial photos were matched on the following google earth blog: http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2011/01/hunting_for_the_megalithic_stone_ci.html 

One French text I looked at shared this photo, but the surrounding area does not fit reality. The other photo below is more likely, however.

French textbook aerial photo

Tombs south of Morocco

North African monolithic sites

Source: Lonely Planet Morocco, 6th Edition

Here's what the Lonely Planet says, and this was basically all I had to go on when I started my search:

   "The ancient and little-understood Monoliths de M'Soura stand on a desolate patch of ground some 25km (by road) southeast of Asilah. The stones, arranged in a circle, range from 50cm to 6m in height and some historians believe the surround the tomb of a noble, perhaps dating back to Punic times. To get to the site  you must first reach the village of Souq Tnine de Sidi el-Yamani, off highway P37, which branches east off the main Tangier to Rabat road. From here, 6km of bad piste (unsealed track) leads north to the site. You need a good vehicle, and a local guide would help."

http://www.journeybeyondtravel.com/news/morocco-travel/monoliths-of-msoura-morocco-travel.html

http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2011/01/hunting_for_the_megalithic_stone_ci.html