When historical people pushed into the Arabian Peninsula, they discovered a world marked by magma. Swaths of it as soon as erupted from volcanoes, leaving a panorama of craters and frozen lava flows. Many of those seemingly otherworldly volcanic fields are adorned with archaeological stays — from small dwellings to colossal animal-corralling buildings known as kites — that date again millenniums.
Little is understood in regards to the identities and lives of these people. However a examine printed Wednesday within the journal PLOS One has revealed that their occupation of this volcanic realm prolonged underground. Archaeologists at a website in northwestern Saudi Arabia have excavated a lava tube — the naturally hollowed-out subterranean remnant of a lava circulation.
On this lava tube, named Umm Jirsan and the primary in Saudi Arabia to be excavated, they uncovered stone software fragments, animal stays and human bones, the oldest of which had been near 7,000 years previous.
“That is actually the primary clear proof of individuals occupying these caves,” mentioned Mathew Stewart, a paleontologist at Griffith College in Australia who is likely one of the examine’s authors.
Umm Jirsan’s tunnels have a mixed size of virtually 5,000 toes, and solely small sections have been examined. Quite than as a everlasting habitat, early people in all probability used this volcanic cave as a method station throughout migrations between oases. “Umm Jirsan would have provided a very nice place of refuge,” from shifting and infrequently excessive weather conditions, Dr. Stewart mentioned.
With 1000’s of further volcanic caves like Umm Jirsan throughout Saudi Arabia, the brand new examine exhibits that they “maintain big promise” for understanding the migrations of early people, Dr. Stewart mentioned.
The Arabian Peninsula has been a website of human migration and occupation for tons of of 1000’s of years. In in depth surveys in recent times, scientists have spied tens of millions of archaeological options (like lakeside hearths) and buildings (like tombs and ritual gathering websites) that these folks left behind. “On the volcanoes themselves, there’s archaeology,” mentioned Melissa Kennedy, who’s an archaeologist on the College of Sydney not concerned with the brand new work. Many such websites date again to instances when stone instruments had been in vogue.
The timing and nature of the area’s varied occupations are nonetheless poorly understood. One difficulty is that desert warmth and winds degrade bones and different natural materials. However Saudi geologists, who had comprehensively mapped their nation’s lava tubes, had famous the presence of archaeological stays, suggesting that these caves might higher protect fragile matter.
To check that notion, in 2019, Dr. Stewart’s staff went to Umm Jirsan to conduct the primary archaeological excavation of an Arabian Peninsula lava tube. An earlier examine based mostly on that expedition revealed that hyenas had used it as a den and left behind stays of birds, hare, gazelle and camels (all presumably prey). Two human cranium fragments had been additionally discovered.
“Hyenas had been robbing graves,” Dr. Stewart mentioned. However other than these scavengings, had been there extra human stays within the lava tube?
The staff’s new examine reveals an abundance of proof of human sojourns elsewhere within the cave: obsidian flakes (fragments of sharp volcanic rock shards utilized in instruments), further human stays and lots of extra animal bones. Varied courting methods recommend that people intermittently occupied Umm Jirsan over a interval of a minimum of 7,000 years, together with current centuries.
They introduced animals with them, a notion supported not simply by the remnants on the website. The staff found 16 rock artwork panels within the entrance to a different lava tube close by. Some present folks herding cattle, sheep and goats, typically with the help of canines; others depict folks searching gazelles and presumably ibex.
The present crop of proof paints a vivid image of the previous, however a lot of the lava tube stays unstudied. “There may very well be some actually spectacular stuff in there,” mentioned Hugh Thomas, an archaeologist on the College of Sydney who was not concerned with the brand new work.
But it surely’s already clear that Saudi Arabia’s lava tubes supply a brand new method “of wanting by time and thru area,” mentioned Michael Petraglia, who’s the director of the Australian Analysis Centre for Human Evolution at Griffith College and an writer of the brand new examine. Every may very well be an unopened window into the lives of humanity’s ancestors.
“This cave is just the start,” he mentioned.
