“GREEN ARABIA” A CRUCIAL MIGRATION ROUTE FOR EARLY HUMANS

Lakes and lush greenery existed on the Arabian Peninsula.

The Arabian Peninsula is more often associated with hot, arid deserts than thriving grasslands and fertile waterways, but new research shows that the peninsula experienced several pulses of increased rainfall over the last 400,000 years. This may have created idyllic conditions and facilitated the spread of early humans into Asia.

The new research establishes northern Arabia as a critical migration pathway in the storied history of our species. Previous studies in south-west Asia have focused on the coastal and woodland margins of the region, but human prehistory in the vast interior has remained poorly understood.

Lead author Huw Groucutt, from the Max Planck Institute, describes the new findings, including the oldest dated evidence for hominins in Arabia at 400,000 years ago, as a “breakthrough in Arabian archaeology”.