Who made these circles in the Sahara?

Someone left these marks in the sand. We had to find out who. Subscribe and turn on notifications 🔔 so you don’t miss any videos: Deep in the Sahara, far from any towns, roads, or other signs of life, is a row of markings in the sand. There are dozens of them stretching for miles in a straight line in central Algeria, each consisting of a central point surrounded by a circle of 12 nodes, like numbers on a clock. And when we started making this video, no one seemed to know what they were. We first saw the circles back in September 2021, after finding a Reddit post on r/WhatIsThis with coordinates asking what the circles could be. With just two upvotes and two commenters, it wasn’t exactly a lively discussion. But seeing the circles themselves on Google Earth was fascinating: They were eerily perfect in their shape and regularity, but so deeply isolated in the desert. We were hooked on finding an answer. So we decided to make a video out of trying to solve the mystery, no matter where it took us. We documented every step of the process — from Zoom calls and web browser screen recordings to vlogs and field shoots — to show the reporting process from the inside out. And when we maxed out what we could learn on the internet, we handed over this story to a team in Algeria to take it all the way. Resources: Check out the circles for yourself: @,,251m/data=!3m1!1e3 Read Will K’s original post: Here’s the 1885 document that Melissa found: Read Dale Lightfoot on the sustainability of qanats: My interview with Marta Musso didn’t make the final cut, but you can check out her work on the history of the hydrocarbon industry and Algerian decolonization: I also spoke to Roberto Cantoni, who wrote a great book that covers the same history: Make sure you never miss behind the scenes content in the Vox Video newsletter, sign up here: is a news website that helps you cut through the noise and understand what’s really driving the events in the headlines. Check out Support Vox’s reporting with a one-time or recurring contribution: Shop the Vox merch store: Watch our full video catalog: Follow Vox on Facebook: Follow Vox on Twitter: Follow Vox on TikTok: @voxdotcom