Dozens of monumental rock carvings of animals have been discovered around in Saudi Arabia’s Nefud desert. They date to 12,000 years ago, 2,000 years older than the previous earliest evidence of human occupation in the area. The discovery has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Before this discovery, the first human presence in the region was documented at Neolithic sites from 10,000 years ago, with the peak of activity between 7,600 and 6,800 years ago, the end of the Holocene humid period, when people built large stone hunting traps, ritual structures and carved rock art of animals and stylized human figures. Very little archaeological material has been found on the Arabian peninsula from before the Holocene humid period. The environment was extremely arid and without dated archaeological sites, human occupation was presumed to have been absent.
In 2022, the Sahout rock art site was discovered. Archaeologists documented 18 life-sized engravings of camels, ibex, gazelles, wild equids and aurochs, some more than six feet high, carved on sandstone boulders and outcroppings. Test excavations dug at that time could not link any dated materials to the rock art, however.
Three more camel panels were reported to heritage authorities by members of the public in locations just south of the Sahout engravings. Archaeologists documented the newly-discovered panels and found more of them on boulders and cliff surfaces, some of them in all but inaccessible locations. The largest recorded panel could only have been accessed by climbing up the cliff. The engraver then had to stand on a downward sloping ledge less than 20 inches wide at its widest point. The brave artist perched on this tiny ledge 125 feet high on the cliff surface, engraving 23 life-sized camels and equids up to nine feet high stretching across two cliff faces, creating a monumental panel more than 75 feet long. Archaeologists had to use a drone to document it.
In total, researchers documented 62 rock art panels with 176 engravings, 130 of them life-sized realistic depictions of camels, ibex, equids, gazelles and one aurochs. The first indicators of the significant age of these panels is the natural dark rock varnish that coats the sandstone surfaces and embeds itself in the carved lines. This varnish takes more than 8,000 years to form after the sandstone has been exposed by carving.
Archaeologists dug four trenches looking for archaeological deposits connected to the rock art that could be dated. These digs yielded more than 1200 lithics (little flakes of rock from the carving) and 16 bone fragments that could be radiocarbon dated. Directly under a carving of two life-sized camels, the excavation uncovered a clear stratigraphy that established the camels had to have been carved no later than when the fourth layer was deposited. They found lithics and a stone pecking tool that may have been used to carve the art.
Radiocarbon dating, luminescence dating and stratigraphic analysis allowed archaeologists to conclude that some of the rock art was carved approximately 12,000 years ago. The artists who literally risked their lives to carve monumental animals into the cliff faces were the first known occupants of the northern Arabian interior since the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM).
These pioneers were able to thrive in the arid conditions of the terminal Pleistocene and earliest Holocene due to seasonal water bodies. The presence of key lithic artefacts such as El Khiam and Helwan points, as well as decorative artefacts such as green pigment and dentalium beads, suggests these human groups maintained contact with their Levantine neighbours during the [Pre-Pottery Neolithic], travelling across vast distances. However, the engravers of Jebel Arnaan and Jebel Misma had their own, distinct cultural and symbolic identity. Their adaptation to an environment where water was only available temporarily, involved complex mobility along routes connecting different water sources. Unlike their Levantine neighbours, they produced monumental rock art that centres around a desert animal symbolism: the camel. These monumental images were used to mark water sources and the routes between them, perhaps providing impressive visual reminders of access rights, while also commemorating these extraordinary desert-adapted groups over millennia.
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