The Arabian Peninsula was similar to the African savannah in ancient times... Will it return to its origin?

Weather of Arabia - During the past years, researchers said that they discovered human traces dating back to about 120 thousand years near one of the lakes in the north of the Arabian Peninsula, specifically in the Nafud Desert area, which was in the past a green, wet land.

It seems that these humans were on their way to West Asia, coming from Africa, and stopped to rest at one of the lakes that was then home to many wild animals such as elephants and cows.

According to the study published in 2020 in the journal Science Advances, researchers were able to discover many traces, but they confirmed that 7 of them belonged to humans, including 4 traces of 3 or 4 men who were traveling together.

The Arabian Peninsula resembled the African savannah

Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, one of the researchers involved in the study, said that the area was a transit corridor. He added:

“Our research and many previous scientific studies confirm that many migrations were occurring from Africa, and specifically from the current Sahara desert region towards the north of the Arabian Peninsula, which was considered a transit zone towards East or West Asia and not the other way around.”

The researchers also found many fossils that, according to them, belong to carnivorous predators that hunted herbivores around the lake, which was frequented by many animals and birds.

According to the study, it seems that archaeologists were theoretically certain that northern Arabia was a transit area towards Asia for the inhabitants of Africa, but they lacked scientific evidence to prove this. The researcher supervising the study, Matthew Stewart of the Max Planck Institute, said in the accompanying press release. For the study and published on the institute’s website:

“I discovered the first of these ruins in 2017 when I was studying for my doctorate, and I was conducting field research near this lake called Al-Athar Lake.” Stewart added: "When we first discovered the ruins, we realized that we had found unprecedented historical evidence dating moments, or perhaps hours or days, that occurred thousands of years ago."

The Nafud Desert is considered one of the important sites that abound with traces and fossils of the remains of large extinct animals. The remains of giant elephants, horses, bulls, deer, oryx, hyenas, wild dogs and birds of prey have been discovered, and all of these specimens are displayed in the Museum of the Fossil Unit at the Saudi Geological Survey.

The Saudi Geological Survey also revealed the discovery of the oldest stone traps in the world in the Great Nafud Desert, which are estimated to be more than 7,000 years old.

See also:

Arabian Peninsula and Arabian Gulf cloud temperatures (colored)

Scientifically: The reasons for the occurrence of heat waves in the summer of the Arabian Peninsula and the rise in temperature to the early fifties Celsius

Sources:

aljazeera

aawsat