The Big Circles are a collection of 12 giant circular stone structures spread across parts of Jordan and Syria. Despite they being over 2,000 years old, very little archaeological attention has been given to them and they remain largely unknown, even among local experts.

The circles were discovered in 1920 by a British pilot named Lionel Rees when he flew across the deserts of what would become Jordan. The pictures Rees took of these immense stone circles became some of the earliest aerial archaeological photographs of these structures. For reasons unknown, Rees findings were ignored and promptly forgotten. It took another 60 years before anyone noticed them again. It was only in the last 10 years, they have started to gain more attention through the work of David Kennedy, a researcher at the University of Western Australia.

Photo credit: Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East