Saudi Arabia's perfectly natural Al Naslaa rock. Source: Al Naslaa Rock, Saudi Arabia

Geologists attribute Al Naslaa's eye-catching split to a weak joint.

Curiously, the split runs across Al Naslaa's horizontal sandstone layers.

The split should be horizontal, not vertical. Because weak joints should form between the rock layers, not across them.

Al Naslaa should have weathered more like Brimham Rocks in Yorkshire:

Though without the lichen. Source: Brimham Rocks - Wikipedia

This rock - Idol Rock - is a 4.5m high sandstone monolith whose wavy sides and narrow base were eroded - we're told - by wind, rain and ice.

Al Naslaa is a 9m high sandstone twinolith whose narrow bases were eroded - we're told - by wind and sand.

But whose flat sides haven't apparently eroded much at all:

Despite being exposed to wind and sand. Source: The Al Naslaa rock an enigmatic sandstone block in Saudi Arabia perfectly split in two

This is the view from a little to the left:

Source: Al Naslaa Rock, Saudi Arabia

These images of Al Naslaa are iconic. They've won photography awards.

Crucially though, they don't show the orientation of Al Naslaa's split or its two flat, exposed, rock faces:

They go this-away and that-away.

Key:

• Red marker: Al Naslaa
• Brown dashed line: Orientation of Al Naslaa's split
• Orange dashed lines: Orientation of Al Naslaa's two flat rock faces

And also crucially, Al Naslaa's most well-known images don't show the view from above:

And the shadows on the faces of its neighbours. Source: The Figen on X - the mystery behind Saudi Arabia’s Al Naslaa rock

From even further up, the flat faces of Al Naslaa's neighbours show up as thin, dark shadows:

Most of them face the same direction. Source: Google Maps

Toward the top right of this image.

The shadowed rock faces themselves run south-east/north-west. They are in line with Al Naslaa's split.

Close up, their shadowed faces are easy to see:

Along with the grey remains of their former neighbours. Source: Google Maps

This is the group of rocks in the top left of the Google Maps image. It is not obvious in this image but zoom in to the Google Maps link and you should see many of the flat rock faces continue across the desert bed as intermittent stony scars.

Like these:

Source: Google Maps

Superimposed on the plan of Al Naslaa's flat faces, these lines look like this:

Orientation of ground scars around Al Naslaa

Key:

• Red marker: Al Naslaa
• Brown dashed line: Orientation of Al Naslaa's split
• Orange dashed line: Orientation of Al Naslaa's two flat rock faces
• Red lines: Direction of parallel cuts and scars on desert floor

This patch of red lines is merely illustrative. In reality, the lines cover a much larger area of desert than shown here.

In many places around Al Naslaa, more lines cross the parallel lines. These cross-cut lines are less obvious and harder to see.

But they are easy to see when they terminate within a rock outcrop:

Source: Google Maps

They vary a bit but the cross-cut lines generally run south-west to north-east. They are roughly parallel with Al Naslaa's exposed flat faces.

Like this:

Al Naslaa's cross-cut environment

Key:

• Red marker: Al Naslaa
• Brown dashed line: Orientation of Al Naslaa's split
• Orange dashed line: Orientation of Al Naslaa's two flat rock faces
• Red lines: Direction of parallel cuts and scars on desert floor
• Blue lines: Direction of cross cuts visible on desert floor

Again, this patch of blue lines is merely illustrative. It shows you the orientation of the cross-cut lines. Like the red lines, they extend over a much larger area of desert than shown here.

This combination:

1. Easy to see parallel lines
2. criss-crossed by shorter, irregular lines
3. accompanied by hints that material has been removed

are signatures of macro-scale clean up.

Each of the clean up's stages leave its own fingerprints.

The long parallel lines were likely cut first; the shorter, less regular criss-cross lines were likely cut next. But not all in one go. They were likely cut in batches and the resulting columns of rock then sliced horizontally and removed. This is why the cross-cut lines are shorter and less regular. They signal slightly more intricate machine work.

Why this workflow?

Because if you don't remove the columns soon after cross-cutting, they are more likely to topple.

Like the one in the middle here:

Source: Visiting Brimham Rocks │ North East National Trust

Toppling columns slow down removal and can damage the machinery being used to cut and load around them. You may have to abandon an unstable column, as well as the rock it leans on.

Equally, you may leave them as clues, as Al Naslaa itself seems to have been.

Instead of being one, unique, split rock, Al Naslaa appears to be one big, photogenic remnant of many squared off rocks. Rocks that were sliced, diced, then - for the most part - removed.

Just like the sharp-edged sandstone crags at Brimham Rocks:

Broken in the bracken: Brimham Rocks. Source: Google Maps

The faces of Idol Rock's Brimham neighbours are easy to see despite the weathering and the lichen, the bracken and the trees now growing among them:

Source: Brimham Rocks (Rocky Outcrop) — The Modern Antiquarian

So are the corners left by cross cuts:

Brimham Rocks, 1960. Source: Photo Print of Brimham Rocks, General View c1960

Around Al Naslaa, some force seems to have burned large patches of sandstone black:

Black scars, cross-cuts and the grey remains of missing material. Source: Google Maps

The green marker at lower centre identifies Jabal An Nisslah, a rock clump 2 km (1.5 miles) east of Al Nislaa.

Jabal An Nisslah also seems to have been blackened:

And cut. And perhaps even melted. Source: Google Maps

Many rocks in this area appear to have slumped or melted and to have been partially blackened:

And cross cut. Source: Google Maps

The area's combination of black patches, possible melting, cross-cuts, and traces of removed landscape hint at the same two-stage process familiar to readers of Desert Forensics - Part Four.

The cross-cuts should also be familiar to readers of Ice Age Sites of Britain's Serpents - Part Four.

Around Brimham Rocks, the terrain is also blackened. But that's due to a recent wildfire. The site's layers of vegetation and soil hide any ground level traces of the forces that shaped its rocks.

But some evidence remains.

For example, Idol Rock used to have a neighbour:

Source: Brimham Craggs, Brimham Rocks, circa 1825 - Alamy

Its neighbour vanished some time around 1825.

A print in the William Gott collection suggests that before 1825, it was being whittled down from something larger:

From Brimham Rocks by James Basire after Hayman Rooke, 1780s. Source: William Gott - Industrialist

Idol Rock's neighbour was not quite as close as Al Naslaa's two halves are today. They were separated by a gap wide enough for a man but too narrow for a camel. Yet what the gap lacks in eye-catching narrowness, it makes up for in eye-catching curviness.

Some say the base of Idol Rock's missing neighbour looks a bit like a carved tree trunk.

Others say these are the mumblings of idiots.

Like the mumblings of the idiots who claim these rocks used to be trees:

Source: Chemnitz petrified forest - Wikipedia

And that these rocks used to be a tree:

Segmented petrified log, Paleorrota geopark, Brazil. Source: Petrified wood - Wikipedia

And this:

Fossil tree, Puyango, Ecuador. Source: Petrified wood - Wikipedia

And this:

Segmented petrified log, Namibia Petrified Forest. Source: Petrified wood - Wikipedia

And this:

Segmented petrified tree. Source: Petrified Forest National Park - Wikipedia

And even this:

Petrified tree mineralised to opal, Arizona. Source: The Lost Legacy

There are many, many petrified forests around the world. At least two are (barely) known in Saudi Arabia. And there are many, many lone, petrified trees.

Curiously, they often remain above ground level.

They hint that something seems capable of transforming timber into rock. Something that transforms the timber before it can rot away.

If that force was in action at Brimham Rocks, it would have presented quarrymen with a unique challenge:

Almost. Source: 7ft Dancing Ghost Made by Hand

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