NOVA · Season 52 · Episode 17

“Ancient Desert Death Trap”

Aired Thursday 23 October 2025

Across the Middle East lie thousands of enigmatic stone megastructures whose shape, when seen from the air, looks like giant kites. The oldest were built around 7,000 B.C., predating the earliest Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge by several thousand years. Since their discovery in the 1920s, these "desert kites" have posed a stubborn mystery: Who designed them, and why were they built? How did prehistoric people, before the invention of writing, draw detailed scale models without compasses, hot air balloons, or drones? Using cutting-edge technologies, an international team of archaeologists is determined to find answers and shed new light on the poorly understood Stone Age period of human history.

S52 E17 discussion