Prehistoric hunting megastructures in the Karst

Prehistoric communities in the Karst used long stone structures for mass hunting of game. To were recently discovered by Slovenian archaeologists Dr Dimitrij Mlekuž Vrhovnik from the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana and Dr Tomaž Fabec from the Slovenian Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.They are complex funnel-shaped dry-wall systems, ranging from a few hundred metres to several kilometres in length, ending in traps under rock steps or walls, into which prehistoric communities directed herds of wild animals. Slovenian archaeologists have found them near Sežana, at Fernetiče, near Šempolaje and in Brestovice.

The discovery is important because to The first discovery of such hunting megastructures in Europe. As the discoverers explain in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a prestigious American scientific journal, comparable stone structures known as desert kites were used for communal hunting of herds of ungulates, mainly gazelles, in North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia.