Saudis urged to embrace groundbreaking archaeological work
RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s Prince Sultan bin Salman encouraged the country to embrace groundbreaking archaeological work in the kingdom, saying it bolstered the practise of Islam.
Addressing a packed auditorium of local and international archaeologists and Saudi leaders, both civil and clerical, on the second day of the kingdom’s inaugural archaeological convention on Wednesday, Sultan said the new findings proved scientifically that the religion remained the final revelation from God, the great religion for all humanity, and that Mecca had occurred and evolved exactly as it is told in the Qur’an.
“There’s a reason why God chose to reveal his revelation here,” he said.
Earlier, archaeologists Dr Paul Breeze and Matthew Stewart had presented their findings relating to Green Arabia.
Breeze has been mapping the so-called palaeo lakes for the past five years, with 8 000 recorded so far. Ten of them have been able to show that monsoon rains fell in Arabia 130 000 years ago.
“Early fossils of our own species came from Africa 100 000 years ago; it’s the first time out of Africa for We had always thought this was a failed dispersal, because the Arabian and Sahara deserts would present a barrier… 125 000 years ago though, the Sahara was green.”
What his team has found at the 10 sites where they have been doing their research is that the paleo lakes show repeated formations of dry and wet.
“There are signs of of
(a forerunner maybe even but no evidence of populations between the periods,” he added.
The archaeologists are going further into the desert than ever before, with at least one 85 000-year-old fossil found from the Nefud Desert.
His assumption is that there was at least one green corridor through the desert to the Levant. “This wasn’t an isolated event during the last interglacial period. They could have moved to south-east Asia or even back in to Africa. These findings bring Arabia front and centre into our own species and the dispersal of others. It’s a really exciting time to be working in Arabia.”
Stewart told of finds of hippos at six sites spanning 800 000 to 8 000 years, suggesting palaeo hydrologic corridors – a chain of rivers and lakes – because hippos have a maximum range of 3km from water before they start dehydrating.
There have also been finds of Pelorovis, the largest bovid or grazer, dating from 420 000 years to 80 000 years, which could only have existed had there been abundant grasslands, and hartebeest and roan that need water every 48 hours.
“There are signs of giant elephants, at least 1.5 times bigger than the African elephant, which would also have had a prodigious hunger for grazing.
There is evidence of “butcher activity”, or “hammer stone percussion”, as early humans broke animal bones to get the marrow of the animals they’d killed.
They’ve found fossilised footprints, at least eight of them at one site.
* Ritchie is in Saudi Arabia as a guest of the Saudi Commission on Tourism and National Heritage