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Saudi Games 2024 Celebrates 'Year of the Camel'

The torch, medals, and victory bouquet of the third edition of the Saudi Games will embody the visual identity of The Year of the Camel initiative. SPA
The torch, medals, and victory bouquet of the third edition of the Saudi Games will embody the visual identity of The Year of the Camel initiative. SPA
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Saudi Games 2024 Celebrates 'Year of the Camel'

The torch, medals, and victory bouquet of the third edition of the Saudi Games will embody the visual identity of The Year of the Camel initiative. SPA
The torch, medals, and victory bouquet of the third edition of the Saudi Games will embody the visual identity of The Year of the Camel initiative. SPA

The organizing committee of the Saudi Games 2024 has announced a collaboration with the Ministry of Culture's "The Year of the Camel" initiative, aiming to promote its goals and message.

The torch, medals, and victory bouquet of the third edition of the Saudi Games will embody the visual identity of The Year of the Camel initiative. The initiative seeks to introduce the camel as a significant cultural, historical, and civilizational symbol in the Kingdom and to strengthen the deep-rooted relationship between generations of society.

The collaboration is part of joint efforts between various sectors to enhance the cultural presence in events hosted by the Kingdom and to solidify the deep-rooted relationship between Saudi society and the camel from generation to generation.

This year is marked as "The Year of the Camel" to celebrate the unique cultural value represented by the camel.

The initiative aims to achieve several goals, including preserving the national identity, introducing future generations and the world to the camel, highlighting its economic importance and role in achieving food security, as well as introducing the civilizational value of the camel and the customs associated with it, its rich cultural and historical heritage, and showcasing its unique capabilities that have earned it a distinguished place in Saudi culture.

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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”