120,000-Year-Old Footprints Found in Saudi Arabia

Science Magazine reports that seven hominin footprints dated to some 120,000 years ago with optically stimulated luminescence were identified among hundreds of animal prints in northern Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert.

They may have paused for a drink of freshwater or to track herds of elephants, wild asses, and camels that were trampling the mudflats. Within hours of passing through, the humans’ and animals’ footprints dried out and eventually fossilized.

Now, these ancient footsteps offer rare evidence of when and where early humans once inhabited the Arabian Peninsula. “These are the first genuine human footprints of Arabia,” says archaeologist and team leader Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

The Arabian Peninsula has long been considered the obvious route that early members of our species took as they trekked out of Africa and migrated to the Middle East and Eurasia.

Stone tools have suggested ancient humans explored the Arabian Peninsula at various times in prehistory when the climate was wetter and its harsh deserts were transformed into green grasslands punctuated with freshwater lakes.

Yet so far, researchers have only found a single human finger bone dating to 88,000 years to prove modern humans, rather than some other hominin toolmaker, lived there.

After a decade of scouring the Arabian Peninsula using satellite imagery and ground-truthing, Petraglia and his international colleagues have identified tens of thousands of ancient freshwater lakebeds, including one in the Nefud dubbed “Alathar,” meaning “the trace” in Arabic. Here, they spotted hundreds of footprints on a heavily trampled lakebed surface, which had recently been exposed when overlying sediments eroded.

Almost 400 tracks were left by animals, including a wild ass, a giant buffalo, elephants, and camels. Only seven were confidently identified as human footprints.

But by comparing the size and shape of these tracks with those made by modern humans and Neanderthals, the researchers conclude the tracks were likely made by people with long feet, taller stature, and smaller mass: Homo sapiens, rather than Neanderthals, as they report today in Science Advances.

The age of the sediments also suggests H. sapiens made the tracks, the researchers say. Using a method called optically stimulated luminescence, which measures electrons to infer when layers of sediment were last exposed to light, the team dated the sediments above and below the footprints to 121,000 and 112,000 years.

At that date, “Neanderthals were absent from the Levant [Middle East],” says co-author Mathew Stewart of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. “Therefore, we argue that H. sapiens was likely responsible for the footprints.”

A lot rests on the dates, however. Geochronologist Bert Roberts of the University of Wollongong notes some uncertainties with dating methods at the site—including older ages for animal fossils and potential issues with calculating the precise rate of decay of uranium in the sediments. The dates for the footprints “might be in the right ballpark,” he says, “but more could be done to validate them.”

The team can’t entirely exclude Neanderthals, says paleoanthropologist Marta Mirazón Lahr of the University of Cambridge, because the fossil record is so spotty in Arabia. But she thinks H. sapiens is the more likely candidate.

Even more intriguing, she notes, the footprints show the humans were capable of moving long distances between Africa and Arabia and must have had fairly large foraging parties to have been able to penetrate deep into the rich interior wetlands of Arabia.

The rare association of human and animal footprints laid down on the same day or so also offers a rare glimpse of a day in the life of an ancient human. Usually, animal and human fossils found in the same fossil bed were buried hundreds, if not thousands, of years apart and never laid eyes on each other.

“These footprints give us a unique snapshot of the humans living in this area at the same time as the animals,” says paleoanthropologist Kevin Hatala of Chatham University in Pittsburgh, an expert on ancient footprints. “That tight association in time is what’s so exciting to me.”

7,000 Years old Stone Structures Investigated in Saudi Arabia

According to a statement released by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, an international team of researchers analyzed satellite imagery and conducted field surveys to document hundreds of massive rectangular stone structures in northwestern Saudi Arabia, and discover more than one hundred additional structures.

Known as “mustatils,” the rectangular monuments are thought to have been constructed by pastoralists for ritual use. Most of them consist of two large platforms connected by long, low, parallel walls, and some locations have multiple structures built right next to each other.

They give insights into how early pastoralists survived in the challenging landscapes of semi-arid Arabia.

The last decade has seen rapid development in the archaeology of Saudi Arabia. Recent discoveries range from early hominin sites hundreds of thousands of years old to sites just a few hundred years old.

One enigmatic aspect of the archaeological record of western Arabia is the presence of millions of stone structures, where people have piled rocks to make different kinds of structures, ranging from burial tombs to hunting traps. One enigmatic form consists of vast rectangular shapes. Archaeologists working with the AlUla Royal Commission gave these the name ‘mustatils,’ which is Arabic for the rectangle.

Mustatils only occur in northwest Saudi Arabia. They had been previously recognized from satellite imagery and as they were often covered by younger structures, it had been speculated that they might be ancient, perhaps extending back to the Neolithic.

In this new article led by Dr. Huw Groucutt (group leader of the Extreme Events Research Group which is a Max Planck group spanning the Max Planck Institutes for Chemical Ecology, the Science of Human History, and Biogeochemistry) an international team of researchers under the auspices of the Green Arabia Project (a large project headed by Prof. Michael Petraglia from the Department of Archaeology at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History and the Saudi Ministry for Tourism as well as collaborators from multiple Saudi and international institutions) conducted the first every detailed study of mustatils.

Through a mixture of field surveys and analyzing satellite imagery, the team has considerably extended knowledge of these enigmatic stone structures. 

More than one hundred new mustatils have been identified around the southern margins of the Nefud Desert, between the cities of Ha’il and Tayma, joining the hundreds previously identified from studies of Google Earth imagery, particularly in the Khaybar area.

The team found that these structures typically consist of two large platforms, connected by parallel long walls, sometimes extending over 600 meters in length.

The long walls are very low, had no obvious openings, and are located in diverse landscape settings. It is also interesting that little in the way of other archaeology – such as stone tools – was found around the mustatils. Together these factors suggest that the structures were not simply utilitarian entities for something like water or animal storage.

At one locality the team was able to date the construction of a mustatil to 7,000 thousand years ago, by radiocarbon dating charcoal from inside one of the platforms.

An assemblage of animal bones was also recovered, which included both wild animals and possibly domestic cattle, although it is possible that the latter are wild auroch. At another mustatil the team found a rock with a geometric pattern painted onto it.

“Our interpretation of mustatils is that they are ritual sites, where groups of people met to perform some kind of currently unknown social activities,” says Groucutt. “Perhaps they were sites of animal sacrifices or feasts.”

The fact that sometimes several of the structures were built right next to each other may suggest that the very act of their construction was a kind of social bonding exercise. Northern Arabia 7,000 years ago was very different from today.

Rainfall was higher, so much of the area was covered by grassland and there were scattered lakes. Pastoralist groups thrived in this environment, yet it would have been a challenging place to live, with droughts at a constant risk. 

The team’s hypothesis is that mustatils were built as a social mechanism to live in this challenging landscape. They may not be the oldest buildings in the world, but they are on a uniquely large scale for this early period, more than two thousand years before pyramids began to be constructed in Egypt.

Mustatils offer fascinating insights into how humans have lived in challenging environments and future studies promise to be extremely useful at understanding these ancient societies.

8,000 years old Fluted Stone Tools Found in Southern Arabia

Cosmos Magazine reports that 8,000-year-old fluted arrowheads have been uncovered in Yemen and in Oman.

Chipping off flakes from stone to shape it is a highly skilled process that had been previously thought to be limited to toolmakers who lived in North America between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago

Throughout southern Arabia, neolithic toolmakers have developed complex stone weapons designed to be practical and to demonstrate their artistic skills.

About 8,000 years ago spearheads and arrowheads were created using fluting, a process first used in North America thousands of years earlier – but there was a difference.

In North America, almost all fluting on projectile points was done near the base, so the implementation could be attached with string to the arrow or spear shaft. However, some Arabian points had fluting that appeared to have no practical purpose, such as near the tip.

“Of course, we can’t say for sure, but we think this was a way for skilled toolmakers to signal something to others, perhaps that one is a good hunter… or dexterous with one’s hands,” says anthropologist Joy McCorriston from Ohio State University (OSU), US, co-author of a paper in the journal PLOS ONE.

“It showed one was good at what one did. This could improve one’s social standing in the community.”

Researchers from the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, and OSU studied projectile points from two archaeological sites: Manayzah, in Yemen, and Ad-Dahariz, in Oman.

Finding fluted points outside of North America was an important discovery, said CNRS’s Rémy Crassard, the study’s lead author.

“These fluted points were, until recently, unknown elsewhere on the planet,” he says. “This was until the early 2000s, when the first isolated examples of these objects were recognized in Yemen, and more recently in Oman.”

The discovery provides one of the best examples of “independent invention” across continents, says Michael Petraglia, from the Max Planck Institute.

“Given their age, and the fact that the fluted points from America and Arabia are separated by thousands of kilometers, there is no possible cultural connection between them,” he says.

“This is a clear and excellent example of cultural convergence, or independent invention, in human history.”

Fluting involves a highly skilled process of chipping off flakes from stone to create a distinctive channel.

As part of their study, the researchers had a master technician in flintknapping – the shaping of stones – attempt to create projectile points in a way similar to how researchers believe the ancient Arabians did.

“He made hundreds of attempts to learn how to do this. It is difficult and a flintknapper breaks a lot of these points trying to learn how to do it right,” McCorriston says.

Human footprints dated to roughly 85,000 years ago revealed in Saudi Arabia

In the Tabuk province in northwestern Saudi Arabia there are human footprints dating back 85,000 years. The traces of the footprints were discovered on the bank of an ancient lake in the desert of Al-Nafud.

During a tour of the display of the “Roads of Arabian — Saudi Archeological Masterpieces through the Ages,” Prince Sultan bin Salman, Chairman of the Saudi Tourism and National Heritage Commission (SATCH) at the National Museum in Tokyo, Japan, revealed the groundbreaking discovery.

Prince Sultan said that an international team of archaeologists, including Saudi experts, found traces of footprints of several adult prehistoric people scattered on the land and in an old lake.

The people may have been fishing in the lake for food, he said, adding that the findings would be studied in great detail.

Prince Sultan said that the team of researchers led by Michael Petraglia, of the Department of Human Evolution at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, presented this small piece of bone as the oldest remains of Homo sapiens discovered outside Africa and the Levant. 

“This bone gives essential indications to understand the exodus of our ancestors from Africa,” he said.

Prince Sultan said that the project was part of the “Green Arabia: The Palaeodeserts Project,” a Saudi-British undertaking for survey and excavation to implement environmental and archaeological studies of historical sites in the Kingdom.

The objective is to study the likelihood of expansion or extinction of humans and animals and their adaptation to living conditions. 

The project has led to many other significant discoveries of animals and mammal fossils in Saudi deserts, including a giant 300,000-year-old elephant tusk from the Nafud Desert, suggesting a greener, wetter Arabian Desert in the past.

An elephant’s carpal bone, located five meters from the tusk, was also discovered in the same sand layer at the excavation site.

The project, funded by the European Research Council, the SCTH and the Max Planck Society, examines the environmental change in the Arabian Desert over the past million years.

A multidisciplinary team of researchers is studying the effect of environmental change on early humans and animals that settled or passed through the desert and how their responses determined whether they survived or died out.

Last month, a fossil finger bone unearthed in Saudi Arabia’s Nafud Desert pointed to what scientists are calling a new understanding of how the human species came out of Africa en route to the rest of the world.

A joint scientific team discovered the first sample of ancient human remains in the northwest of Saudi Arabia.

The research team included the Saudi Geological Survey, the SCTH, King Saud University, the Max Planck Foundation for Human History, Oxford University, Cambridge University, the Australia National University and the University of New South Wales in Australia.

Researchers say the discovery shows that hunter-gatherers had reached the area 85,000 years ago. Previously discovered human fossils show an earlier human presence in Israel and possibly China.

The bone, from an adult and most likely a middle finger, was found in 2016 about 550 kilometers southeast of the Sinai Peninsula.

Michael Petraglia, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, said that the ancient people probably left Africa through the peninsula.