From Africa to Arabia and around the world

Scientists have identified 5 episodes of the migration of ancient people from Africa to Arabia. According to the results of an international study published in the journal Nature, the first people came to Arabia from Africa 400 thousand years ago. After that, there were at least four more waves of migration, each of which coincided with a short period of decreasing aridity in the region, when the Arabian Peninsula was covered with greenery and numerous lakes. Archaeological excavations have been conducted on the territory of Saudi Arabia for a long time, but until now they were limited to coastal areas and small oases, and the vast interior remained unexplored.

Also, archaeologists from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Mankind in Jena (Germany), together with colleagues from other countries and with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia, carried out work on the Hall-Amaishan 4 site and in the Jubba oasis in the Nefud desert in the north of the Arabian Peninsula and found thousands of stone tools and animal bones, indicating repeated stay in this area of ancient people.

Geographically, the finds are confined to the coastal zone of a large lake, once located between two large dunes. The researchers identified six periods of fullness of the lake, with five of which the finds of artifacts coincide in time.

The results of geochronological analyses of stone tools showed that people lived here about 400, 300, 200, 100 and 55 thousand years ago. The authors determined the age of the finds by the method of luminescent dating, which records the time during which tiny grains of sand on the surface of artifacts were exposed to sunlight.

The authors note that each of the five phases of human stay on the shores of the lake in the Nefud desert is characterized by its own type of material culture – from the Acheulean culture of the "hand axe" of the Lower Paleolithic to the Middle Paleolithic technologies of stone flakes – by which it is possible to trace the change in human culture over time.

In some cases, the differences in material culture are so great that, according to researchers, this indicates the simultaneous presence in the region of various groups, and possibly species of hominins who came to Arabia, both from Africa and Eurasia. This is confirmed by animal fossils. Most of them are of African origin, but there are also those who came from the north.

The discovery of large mammal fossils in the middle of this hyper—arid desert is a unique event. The most remarkable was the discovery of several fragments of hippo bones. Currently, their habitat is limited to humid areas of Africa, and their presence in the Nefud desert over the past 400 thousand years is a convincing proof that the Arabian Peninsula was much wetter in the past than it is today, against the general background of the arid climate on the peninsula, phases of increasing precipitation periodically occurred, which led to the formation of thousands of lakes, rivers and swamps. At that time, favorable conditions for the migration of people and animals were established in the region. Arabia has become a kind of migration hub, one of the meanings of the English word hub is the center of attention, interest, activity.

From the book by Tikhomirov A.E. "Migrations of peoples. Genesis as a historical source. The Science of the Old Testament": "Primitive humanity, settling from the west (Africa) to the east (the Arabian Peninsula) and developing new lands in the depths of Asia, split into two groups of populations in the Ancient Stone Age: black and white. This was due to a decrease in the amount of melanin, brown and black pigments. Migration flows were different, depending on the climatic and geographical conditions of the area. For example, the western part of modern Russia could serve as migration routes for Africans who were heading north, where 100 – 70 thousand years ago there was a completely different climate – warm and favorable for living, the area of the modern Arctic Ocean. Over the past time, archaeologists have managed to discover the remains of more than a hundred dwellings of the Ancient Stone Age, located in settlements in Europe and Northern Asia, for example, the Kostenok district in the modern Voronezh region of Russia. Of course, the most studied settlements of the late Paleolithic in the range of 30-12 thousand years BC. They were located in the valleys of large and small rivers, such as the Dnieper and its tributaries Desna, Seim, Ros. Now the remains of these settlements lie in the thickness of the first and second above-floodplain terraces at an altitude of 5-10 to 30 or even more meters above the river level. But in the late Paleolithic, the water level was much higher, and the dwellings stood on the very shore."

In the early Paleolithic era, it was the Arabian Peninsula that became the first place from where humanity began its march across the planet. In Saudi Arabia, 46 Lower Paleolithic archaeological sites containing stone tools and animal bones were found in the Nefud desert near the dried-up beds of Paleozoic lakes. In the parking lot of Homo erectus Saffaqah, located in the center of Saudi Arabia, archaeologists found approx. 8 thousand artifacts, including a huge number of Acheulean tools made of andesite. Several stone tools found in a sandy layer of soil under the bottom of a dried-up lake in Ti-al-Gad in the Nefud desert date back to the period between 300 and 500 thousand years ago. Luminescent chronology data indicate that 130 thousand years ago the Arabian Peninsula was relatively hotter, the amount of rainfall was higher, due to which it was covered with vegetation and habitable land. At that time, the level of the Red Sea fell and the width of its southern part was only 4 km. This for a short time created the opportunity for people to cross the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, through which they reached Arabia and founded a number of the first sites in the Middle East – such as Jebel Fayya. Early migrants, fleeing from climate change in Africa, crossed the "Gates of Sorrow" to the territory of modern Yemen and Oman and further across the Arabian Peninsula in search of more favorable climatic conditions. There is a distance of 2000 km between the Red Sea and Jebel Fayya (UAE), where the uninhabitable desert is now located, but about 130 thousand years ago, at the end of the next ice age, the Red Sea was shallow enough to cross it by wading or on a small raft, and the Arabian Peninsula was not a desert, and a green-covered area.

The second phalanx of the middle finger of a person aged 90 thousand years was discovered in the location of Taas-el-Gadha near the oasis of Taim or Tema in northwestern Saudi Arabia. A three-dimensional scan confirmed the anatomical correspondence of the finger from the Nefud desert to a modern person, and not to any other hominin.

With the end of the ice age in Europe, the climate became hotter and arid, and Arabia turned into a desert poorly adapted for human life.

Sculptures-statues of animals (including a dog, an ostrich, a falcon), stone tools, arrowheads, scrapers, spearheads were found on the surface at the location of al-Makar in the Taslis governorate of Asir province. Four burnt bones of unknown origin were dated by radiocarbon dating 7300-6640 BC. In al-Makar, the presence of man is confirmed from the Middle Paleolithic to the protohistorical period. David Anthony considers the fragment of the sculpture of an unknown animal 86 cm long to be an image of a wild donkey (Equus asinus), not a horse.

The pre-Hashel Hadramaut industry of the multi-layered Al-Guza cave site in Yemen is characterized by inventory typical of Olduvai monuments. Based on geomorphological, stratigraphic paleomagnetic data from the lower culture-containing horizon H, it can be concluded that the human settlement of Southern Arabia occurred about 1.65—1.35 million years ago. In the early Paleolithic era, it was Arabia that became the first place from where humanity began its march across the planet. At the site of Homo erectus Saffaqah, located in the center of Saudi Arabia, archaeologists have found about 8 thousand artifacts, including a huge number of tools made of andesite. In Saudi Arabia, 46 Lower Paleolithic archaeological sites containing stone tools and animal bones were found in the Nefud desert near the dried-up beds of Paleozoic lakes.

The Acheulean industry was discovered in South Arabia at the Mashhad III parking lot, the location of Jol-Urum (Hadhramaut). The Mashhad III site reveals similarities with the Ashel of the Middle East and the Kharga oasis in Egypt. The stone industry of the Upper Paleolithic from the sites of Hadramaut (Mashhad IV and V, Al-Gabr IV, X—XII, Wadi Dawan I—III, etc.) and the locations of Mahra (Wadi Hurut I and III) is more archaic compared to the European and Middle Eastern Upper Paleolithic industries and merges with the synchronous monuments of the Nile Valley and the Libyan Desert, forming a single cultural province with them. H. A. Amirkhanov considers Hadramaut materials as a South Arabian variant of the "oasis cultures" of the Afro-Asian strip of the dry tropics. On the territory of South Arabia, the most important stratified Neolithic complexes in Hadramaut are As-Safa I, Mashhad X—XI, in Mahr – Habarut I and II, Msabig canopy, Khbek cave. In the early Neolithic of Arabia (VIII—VI thousand BC), H. A. Amirkhanov identifies two sharply distinct cultural complexes: South Arabian and East Arabian. The industry of the East Arabian complex reveals its proximity to the pre-Ceramic Neolithic of the Middle East was formed under the direct influence of Mesopotamian cultural impulses.

In Turkey, not far from one of the oldest temple complexes in the world, Gebekli Tepe (Sanliurfa province), archaeologists have found 11 more large hills created by humans, mounds literally surround structures built about 12 thousand years ago, at a distance of 100 kilometers. A migration hub is also being formed here, from where people begin to move to other regions and form language groups. This is most likely where the so-called nostratic languages are created. Danish linguist X. Pedersen at one time put forward a hypothesis about the genetic connection of the languages of several major families that were considered unrelated. He called these languages "nostratic" (from Lat. noster is ours). The research of the Soviet linguist V. M. Illich-Svitych has shown the scientific validity of combining Indo-European, Semitic-Hamitic, Uralic, Altaic and some languages into a large nostratic macrofamily of languages. This macrofamily was formed in the Upper Paleolithic on the territory of Southwest Asia and adjacent areas. During the retreat of the last Wurm glaciation and climatic warming in the Mesolithic, Nostratic tribes settled over a vast territory of Asia and Europe; they pushed back, and partially assimilated the tribes that lived there earlier. In this historical process, nostratic tribes formed a number of separate areas, where the formation of special language families began. The largest of them, the Indo–European linguistic community began to form first in the region of Central Asia – the archaeological culture of Kelteminar, then on the territory of the Southern Urals, and then in the "Big Steppe" – from the Altai to the Black Sea region.