The Mystery Circles: Were Ancient Giants Playing With Toys… or Were Humans Playing a Prank?

If you’ve heard of Stonehenge, you probably imagine massive stones arranged in a neat circle, full of mystery and maybe a dash of magic. But here’s a fun thought I once had: what if the stones were actually toys used by baby giants? I mean… who’s to say they weren’t stacking blocks while their parents weren’t looking?

As wild as that idea sounds, it turns out Stonehenge isn’t the only ancient circle out there raising eyebrows. Back in the 1920s, a British commander named Lionel Rees flew his biplane over what is now Jordan. While snapping some of the earliest aerial photographs in archaeology, he noticed something strange: huge, nearly perfect stone circles spread across the desert.

Rees was fascinated, but almost nobody else paid attention. He wrote about the circles in the journal Antiquity, describing them as “almost exact circles”, unlike anything else in the region. Some were over 1,200 feet wide, yet mysteriously simple: low rock walls, no entrances, and no clear purpose. Despite the scale and precision, his discovery was basically forgotten.

Fast-forward about 60 years. Archaeologists finally rediscovered his photos and went, “Wait… what are those?” In the last decade, researchers have flown across Jordan using high-resolution imaging and located at least 11 ancient big circles, each roughly 400 meters (1,312 feet) in diameter. The similarities between them are so striking that it’s almost impossible to believe they were designed by chance.

In total, they've found:

• 12 circles in Jordan

• 1 in Syria

• 2 more in southeastern Turkey

These weren’t tall structures, just low, stone rings only a few feet high. They originally had no openings, meaning anyone entering had to climb over the wall. Their age is another mystery. Based on photographs and scattered artifacts, the circles are at least 2,000 years old, but they could be far older, possibly even prehistoric, made long before writing existed.

Archaeologist David Kennedy of the University of Western Australia, who has studied these sites extensively, says they wouldn’t have been hard to build. With local rocks and maybe a dozen dedicated workers, one circle could’ve been completed in about a week. The challenge wasn’t the labour, it was the precision. Making a nearly perfect circle on rugged terrain? That takes planning.

Some circles even have a Roman road running straight across them, which suggests the rings were already ancient by the time the Romans arrived. They’ve been found in deserts, rough rocky areas, and near hills, meaning whoever built them didn’t care about easy landscapes.

So here’s the big question:

What were these massive stone circles actually for?

Alien landing pads?

Ancient astronomical markers?

Tiny castles for little forest elves?

Or… perhaps… something even funnier?

Imagine ancient people thousands of years ago, no phones, no TikTok, no YouTube, no Netflix. Just a whole lot of spare time. What if a group of them got together and said, “You know what would be hilarious? Let’s build giant stone circles everywhere and leave future humans totally confused!”

And honestly? It worked.

Today we’re poring over drone images, writing research papers, and debating their meaning, while the original builders might have been laughing the whole time, thinking, This is going to blow their minds in a few thousand years.

So what do you think these giant circles were?

Ancient engineering?

Sacred monuments?

Giant baby toys?

Or the world’s oldest practical joke?