Possible ancient geopglyph Morocco

Hi. I found a possible perfect celtic cross geoglyph while exploring volcanoes in Morocco. This one is situated near the top of an old extinct shield volcano named Jbel Outgui in the Middle Atlas mountains of central Morocco.

Have a look . You can note all the field around the volcano is ancient lava.

Update : there is a small circle on the top right of the cross. Direction of the main line seem pointing to the top of the volcano. The sign is on a mountain side, not on flat ground. 




Hi , I found a 




Celtic Cross Morocco.kmz (772 B)

And in few meters from it there is this :



Circle Morocco.kmz (685 B)

Hi jamil,

Your find presents an interesting puzzle, and I, for one would like to have a look at it, but I'd far prefer that you provide a placemark as well as a screen shot.

This allows other members who are interested in your location to find it easily, and bring to bear other tools (like Street View, Historical Imagery, Photo Layer, etc), as well as searching the surrounding area for clues about the nature of the site, without going through the difficult process of finding the location (which the Fun and Games people delight in doing but some of us find boring) or the tedious process of entering coordinates in the Search Box, which will take us to the place, but will not share the view you are seeing.

With the built-in file creation tools in Google Earth, one can easily create a placemark. This placemark can then be saved (and automatically compressed in the process to a .kmz file), which can then be attached to your post and downloaded by others.

Hill has written instructions for how to create a simple placemark and posted it here: googleearthcommunity.proboards.com/post/3703/thread

Good luck!

washi

Thank you. It's done.

Thanks for providing the placemark. It make locating your find much more convenient.

I've been pondering your puzzle, and so far I'm still scratching my head.

I don't think the mark is ancient. There are only two Historical images available. The marks do seem to show up very faintly in the oldest (2010). This seems strange because the same-date imagery of the adjacent inhabited area 1 ~ 2 km to the northeast is very sharp and vivid. At any rate, construction of this shape requires fairly complex (junior high school) mathematics, and to make these lines 2 meters wide probably requires some kind of dozer blade.

I checked to see if I could find any relation between the marks and alternate space shuttle landing sites, but no relationships were obvious to me.

The marks are inside the boundary of Ifrane National Park. Outside of Wikipedia, the only other information I looked at was in French, which I do not know, but I doubt if the marks have anything to do with the park. It may be significant that the land is publicly rather than privately owned.

I'm waiting for Hill and the others who are expert at exploring these kinds of mysteries to weigh in.

ndrqu from Fun & Games found nothing that explains what these things are  but I'll keep investigating

I have found a geological article of the area. These people went on that volcano doing some studies -> www.academia.edu/3748827/Geomorphology_and_Geomorphological_Heritage_of_the_Ifrane-Azrou_region_Middle_Atlas_Morocco_._Environmental_Geology_58

And, turns out they are italian, like me.

J. De Waele, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra e Geologico-Ambientali, Universita´di Bologna, Via Zamboni 67,40126 Bologna, Italye-mail: [e-mail]
M. T. Melis, Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra, University of Cagliari, Via Trentino 51, 09127 Cagliari, Italye-mail: [e-mail]

I asked them by email and will let you know 

Could the circular area, be a weathered down Maar of sometype.
Perhaps it was once filled with water and dried up.

Jul 10, 2015 16:02:27 GMT ET_Explorer said:

Could the circular area, be a weathered down Maar of sometype.
Perhaps it was once filled with water and dried up.

I don't think so. It's not depressed in the middle, and it looks definitely man-made.
My best guess is an old wall to contain livestock, but there is no proof of that, and it doesn't work for the celtic cross.

Hi

Just browsing the same area and found a perfect circle with another little perfect circle inside. It seems there are many other things in this place. Those symbols are always in place outsides of the many pathes used by locals. This can explain these signs might be not known by people living there. Strange . The closest thing I found to this are geoglyphs found in Brazil Amazon .

The circles are better viewed on google earth directly.




Strange Circle Morocco.kmz (706 B)

One of the guys that I mentioned answered me



He said he has no idea and that he didn't notice them when he went there. He says they are probably digital artifacts (which they are clearly not, he's obviously not very familiar with aerial imagery). And that he can't explain them otherwise.

Sorry, I tried everything I could 

Here's a different take on it. From 1912-1956, encompassing the time of both WW 1 and WW 2, Morocco was a French and Spanish Protectorate . The Germans and Allies fought all across Northern Africa during WW 2. All of these countries had air forces stationed there. The circles look about the same as bombing targets which can be found in desert areas all around the world. So I propose that they may be targets, most likely from the time of WW 2. Deserts are good places for target ranges because they are mostly unpopulated and the targets last for a long time in desert environments because of very low erosion. 

Morocco has many air bases itself now (Source) but these circles show no evidence of recent cratering. 

HERE is one thread of many from the oGEC archives showing a variety of bomb targets in the United States southwest. Some date from the WW 2 era.

Jul 11, 2015 16:47:41 GMT Hill said:

Here's a different take on it. From 1912-1956, encompassing the time of both WW 1 and WW 2, Morocco was a French and Spanish Protectorate . The Germans and Allies fought all across Northern Africa during WW 2. All of these countries had air forces stationed there. The circles look about the same as bombing targets which can be found in desert areas all around the world. So I propose that they may be targets, most likely from the time of WW 2. Deserts are good places for target ranges because they are mostly unpopulated and the targets last for a long time in desert environments because of very low erosion. 

Morocco has many air bases itself now (Source) but these circles show no evidence of recent cratering. 

HERE is one thread of many from the oGEC archives showing a variety of bomb targets in the United States southwest. Some date from the WW 2 era.

But why would someone bomb the desert? The only reason I can think of is for testing weapons

The area is not a desert . It is the surrounding of the volcano which is ancient lava flow with very few vegetation on it because of the constitution of the volcanic ground.
The volcano is part of Ifrane National Park which is known to be called the Switzerland of Morocco because of the vast forest of Cedar tree and the high altitude making this place always covered by snow in winter. Just go a little south of the volcano in GE , you will find swow everywhere. I searched for target practice photos and they're all on flat ground while those circle are on the side of the volcano but it is a possibility.

Jul 12, 2015 1:04:18 GMT jamil said:

The area is not a desert . It is the surrounding of the volcano which is ancient lava flow with very few vegetation on it because of the constitution of the volcanic ground.
The volcano is part of Ifrane National Park which is known to be called the Switzerland of Morocco because of the vast forest of Cedar tree and the high altitude making this place always covered by snow in winter. Just go a little south of the volcano in GE , you will find swow everywhere. I searched for target practice photos and they're all on flat ground while those circle are on the side of the volcano but it is a possibility.

As I look at it more it seems less likely that the bomb range hypothesis is correct. Though the region does have open, almost treeless terrain, it is a bit hilly. Also I find that when looking at historical imagery the circle and cross is barely visible in 2010 data. It looks like the design was refreshed over the past five years and is much more visible in 2015. 

Another thing is that WW 2 Moroccan airfields were at or near the coast. It would be a big waste of fuel to carry practice bombs all that distance. Most practice was probably conducted in the countries of the participants for the same reason. 

So it looks like now someone is going to have to go on a field trip if we want clarification. 

Jul 12, 2015 1:04:18 GMT jamil said:

The area is not a desert . It is the surrounding of the volcano which is ancient lava flow with very few vegetation on it because of the constitution of the volcanic ground.
The volcano is part of Ifrane National Park which is known to be called the Switzerland of Morocco because of the vast forest of Cedar tree and the high altitude making this place always covered by snow in winter. Just go a little south of the volcano in GE , you will find swow everywhere. I searched for target practice photos and they're all on flat ground while those circle are on the side of the volcano but it is a possibility.

For "desert" I meant a non-populated area. What's the point of bombing a place where there is nothing, other then testing purposes?

But as Hill says it looks strange even this hypotesis, it's not the most ideal spot for something like that.

My hypotesis of livestock wall is also unrelealistic, why would someone build a perfect circle just to contain some animals? no reason for that effort, expecially if you have all that land at your disposal.

The circles and crosses, MUST be something that have to do with a spot that someone has to recognize from the sky. I don't think there are other reasons why you would build a perfect celtic cross in the middle of an unpopulated area.
Probably they are marks for something that is not related to military, but what else then?

Hi

Again another two perfect cicle with a little perfect circle inside in the same area. So now, 5 strange signs all concentrated on the western side of the volcano field. It seems the 3 concentric look-alike circles are perfectly aligned despite the distance between them.





Strange circle 2.kmz (698 B)


The following one is less visible but it is there :




Strange circle 3.kmz (698 B)

Perhaps they are like the Nazca Lines in Peru

Hi again

Maybe the end of the mystery.

Hill was in fact on the right track when he said the celtic cross was refreshed over recently. After some research, I found there is a military base in the closest city named El Hajeb. And guess what is the speciality of this base : military free-fall parachute courses.   But I don't know if it is common to have these kinds of targets for the trainings.  Here's a video :



It seems the volcano area is a training ground for this base (circled in red ) :

OHHH! Parachuting, how didn't I think of that sooner? I'd say the mistery is solved, good job

A fascinating thread!  This kind of teamwork is great when there is a mystery to solve.