A trove of life-sized animal rock engravings lately found within the Northern Arabian Desert could point out that the notoriously arid area was populated round 12,000 years in the past, opposite to earlier beliefs that the realm was as soon as uninhabitable. Printed within the journal Nature Communications final month, the findings assist fill a long-standing hole within the area’s archaeological timeline on the finish of the final Ice Age and starting of the Holocene interval.
Throughout a survey of three archaeologically unexplored areas in Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert — Jebel Arnaan, Jebel Mleiha, and Jebel Misma — researchers discovered 176 large petroglyphs carved into sandstone cliffs and boulder facades. Layered in thick, darkish rock varnish, the petroglyphs have been carved on elevated ledges at heights as much as 128 ft.
The archaeologists defined that “the difficulty in getting to and engraving these rock surfaces, and their enhanced visibility by height were clearly attractive for the engravers,” who “likely risked their lives to create this art.”
The examine was performed in 2023 by a global staff of researchers and heritage specialists led by archaeologist Maria Guagnin of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany. It was funded by the Saudi Heritage Fee, established as a part of the Saudi authorities’s multitrillion-dollar tourism and financial program Imaginative and prescient 2030, which has been criticized as an try to whitewash ongoing human rights violations.
Engravings depicting camels, gazelles, an ibex, a horse-related mammal, and a bovine ancestor
A majority of the engravings depicted desert-acclimated animals, together with wild camels, ibex, horse-like mammals, and gazelles, save for a number of renderings of human figures and one carving of an extinct bovine ancestor. They have been sometimes discovered superimposed over earlier, “more cartoonish” carvings, “reflecting a stylistic evolution over time,” the researchers wrote.
Researchers consider that historical nomadic hunter-gatherer teams could have used these engravings to doc networks of freshwater sources, dispelling earlier beliefs that there was no human exercise within the space throughout this era. On the time, unstable cool climate patterns had created widespread dryness throughout the Arabian Peninsula, leading to dune migrations and mass exoduses from the area.
The researchers’ theories have been supported by sedimentary analyses indicating the presence of seasonal lakes, which might have allowed early occupants to stay in an in any other case dry ecosystem. The authors additionally referenced the singular depiction of the bovine animal within the petroglyphs, which was recognized for being an “obligate drinker” and wouldn’t have been in a position to survive with out entry to contemporary water.
“The engravings, which may have been created over a time span of millennia, would have reminded people of ancient symbolisms and beliefs of their group, which likely structured their highly seasonal lives and thus enhanced their ability to thrive in these marginal landscapes,” the authors wrote.
Arrowheads, bladelets, and beads excavated from the archaeological websites (picture by Antonio Reiss)
Researchers additionally excavated 16 bone fragments and 1,200 stone instruments and ornamental beads from the three websites. They consider that these artifacts, a few of which have been unearthed straight under the rock engravings, point out relationships between early Arabian communities and neighboring Levantine populations to the north, which might have required touring lengthy distances by way of advanced routes.
“The durability of the images may have facilitated the remembrance of meaning and symbolism across generations of people using these sites,” they added.
