Monumental rock art illustrates that humans thrived in the Arabian Desert during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition
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Shipton, C
Al-Jibreen, F
Losi, G
Kalifi, A
Armitage, SJ
Stileman, F
Stewart, M
Al-Tamimi, F
Breeze, PS
van Buchem, F
Drake, N
Al-Shamry, M
Al-Shammari, A
Al-Wadani, J
et al.
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Abstract
Dated archaeological sites are absent in northern Arabia between the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and 10,000 years ago (ka), signifying potential population abandonment prior to the onset of the Holocene humid period. Here we present evidence that playas became established in the Nefud desert of northern Arabia between ~16 and ~13 ka, the earliest reported presence of surface water following the hyper-aridity of the LGM. These fresh water sources facilitated human expansions into arid landscapes as shown by new excavations of stratified archaeological sites dating to between 12.8 and 11.4 ka. During the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, human populations exploited a network of seasonal water bodies - marking locations and access routes with monumental rock engravings of camels, ibex, wild equids, gazelles, and aurochs. These communities made distinctive stone tool types showing ongoing connections to the late Epipalaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic populations of the Levant.
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Nature Communications
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16
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© The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Archaeology
Middle Eastern and North African history
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Guagnin, M; Shipton, C; Al-Jibreen, F; Losi, G; Kalifi, A; Armitage, SJ; Stileman, F; Stewart, M; Al-Tamimi, F; Breeze, PS; van Buchem, F; Drake, N; Al-Shamry, M; Al-Shammari, A; Al-Wadani, J; Alsharekh, AM; Petraglia, M, Monumental rock art illustrates that humans thrived in the Arabian Desert during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, Nature Communications, 2025, 16, pp. 8249