[fmjrey]

The topic of star forts is very very interesting, though it raises more questions than satisfying answers.

For example, central Asia has many such forts in the middle of nowhere ([1] [2] [3] [4] [5]), some barely noticeable except from above, and even the surrounding landscape looks so scorched one wonders what really happened for the land to look like this and for these forts to be so erased. If you think natural erosion you imagine millennia, but focus on the forts and you imagine centuries, and it's hard to combine both scales.

Also you can find star forts all over the globe.The kmz file from this site [6] lists about a thousand locations across the globe, it's mind boggling to navigate around them. Who or what civilization managed to propagate this style so far beyond the reaches of what history taught us?

Finally the star forts are most often associated to the finest water canal in the world, and it's also mind boggling to imagine the amount of work involved in modelling the earth at such scale and precision without any engine.

Wild theories abound, I personally prefer focusing on the things one can see or visit and abstain from believing any (hi)story, but even then it's captivating.

[1] https://goo.gl/maps/ZUsQsocutLTXiodm7 [2] https://goo.gl/maps/pkTMLFN7fxYofhkw8 [3] https://goo.gl/maps/SwogTFKo1uuidPNn9 [4] https://goo.gl/maps/1aFRdVHujvL8jLNTA [5] https://goo.gl/maps/gXTCPXjkSvbFnT2B9 [6] http://starforts.org/locations.html

[Tuna-Fish]

> Who or what civilization managed to propagate this style so far beyond the reaches of what history taught us?

... European colonists, mostly. Star forts are what they built to protect themselves from the locals, who typically outnumbered them by some absurd margin. Because of this, you can find them wherever colonization was happening.

The Central Asian forts you linked are mostly part of the Siberian Line, a line of forts the Russians built where the northern forest turned to the southern steppe mostly in the early 18th century to protect their southern border from Kazakh raids, and to extend their influence eastwards. The land around them always looked like that as they were built on the periphery of the more fertile areas, to protect them. The forts themselves are so eroded mostly because they were not really built to last in the first place. As they were in the middle of nowhere, with no cheap transport available, they were built with what was locally available, which was often just packed earth with maybe a brick wall to keep the outer walls in shape.