Ancient humans dispersed through Arabia during greener times

Long gone are the days when scientists asserted that ancient humans could not possibly cross through and inhabit the harsh world of what has historically been referred to as the Arabian Desert, including the Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula.

Traditional theories depicted groups of early modern humans first dispersing out of northeastern Africa north and east through the Levant and then northward into present-day Europe and through northern routes into India and then the Far East. Additional dispersals took them along routes hopping the coasts of Arabia and then coastal across India, then further northward and eastward. These models of early human dispersal avoided the Arabian interior, as few could imagine humans making their way directly and deeply into this desert no-man’s land.

But remote sensing technology, including satellite imagery, has now placed Arabia squarely on the map of early human dispersal paradigms. Recent studies using this new technology have reported ancient systems of lakes ('paleolakes') and rivers—green zones—deep within the Arabian desert regions as much as 100,000 or more years ago. Archaeological investigations at some of the ancient lakeshore sites have yielded human stone tools, some of them dated back even earlier than 100,000 years ago.

Full story: popular-archaeology.com/issue/winter-2015-2016/article/ancient-humans-dispersed-through-arabia-during-greener-times