A study published in Nature Communications redated human activity in northern Arabia by confirming that a gallery of life-sized animal carvings on the southern rim of the Nefud Desert was engraved between about 12,800 and 11,400 years ago. The work, carried out under the Green Arabia Project and led by the Saudi Ministry of Culture’s Heritage Commission, built on a 2021 field season in which an international team recorded more than 60 panels bearing 176 engravings across Jebel Arnaan, Jebel Mleiha, and Jebel Misma.
Laboratory analysis combined optical dating of hammerstones, luminescence testing of sediment beneath one panel, and microscopic examination of tool marks. Almost every carving lay above or beside ancient run-off channels that once fed shallow lakes; sediment cores showed those lakes formed around 15,000 years ago and reappeared intermittently for millennia. Researchers proposed that the panels marked both water sources and the routes leading to them.
The carvings differ from any other rock art in the Middle East. One cliff face displays 19 camels and three donkeys 39 m above the wadi floor, while another shows two overlapping camels, one rising and the other striding. Of the 176 figures, 130 appear at natural size; several exceed three meters in length and two in height. Most depict male camels in rut, a seasonal reference linked to brief desert rains.
“These large engravings are not just rock art. They were probably statements of presence, access, and cultural identity,” said Maria Guagnin, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, according to Phys.org. She noted that drones were needed to photograph panels visible only for about an hour after sunrise. “It would have been extremely dangerous to make these engravings as the ledge is very narrow and slopes downwards, but they still produced naturalistic images,” she told Reuters. In sediment sealed beneath one camel panel, the team recovered an engraving tool that luminescence dated to 12,000 years ago. Guagnin called the find “the sort of evidence rock-art researchers dream of.”
Excavations at the cliff bases yielded 532 stone artifacts, El Khiam and Helwan points, green pigments, and dentalium beads. The items indicate contacts with Pre-Pottery Neolithic groups hundreds of kilometers to the north. “This story resonates even today, as it shows the remarkable ability of these people to expand, adapt, and survive in marginal environments,” said Michael Petraglia, director of the Green Arabia Project, in a Reuters interview.
Dr. Faisal Al-Jibreen of the Saudi Heritage Commission described the carvings as “a distinct cultural identity adapted to life in a challenging, arid environment,” Phys.org reported. The findings push back evidence for recurrent occupation of the Nefud interior by roughly 2,000 years, showing that hunter-gatherer communities managed scattered oases well before wetter Holocene conditions set in.
Researchers offered two main interpretations: the images either declared territorial claims to scarce water and game, or acted as wayfinders guiding travelers toward seasonal lakes and tracking animal migrations. Although centuries of sandstorms have eroded many outlines, enough remains to map a network of risky yet enduring artistry tied to the promise of returning rains.
“These ancient communities survived in the desert by moving between seasonal lakes and marked the water sources, as well as the paths leading to them, with monumental petroglyphs,” said Guagnin. She added that the multidisciplinary study “has begun to fill a critical gap in the archaeological record of northern Arabia between the Last Glacial Maximum and the early Holocene.”
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