Human footprints provide snapshot of last interglacial ecology in the Arabian 
interior

Stewart, Mathew; Clark-Wilson, Richard; Breeze, Paul S.; Janulis, Klint; Candy, Ian; Armitage, Simon J.; Ryves, David B.; Louys, Julien; Duval, Mathieu; Price, Gilbert J.; Cuthbertson, Patrick; Bernal, Marco A.; Drake, Nick A.; Alsharekh, Abdullah M.; Zahrani, Badr; Al-Omari, Abdulaziz; Roberts, Patrick; Groucutt, Huw S.; Petraglia, Michael D.

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba8940

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Human footprints provide snapshot of last interglacial ecology in the Arabian interior

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Stewart, Mathew
Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society;
Max Planck Research Group Extreme Events, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society;

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Drake, Nick A.
Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society;

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Roberts, Patrick
Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society;

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Groucutt, Huw S.
Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society;
Max Planck Research Group Extreme Events, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society;

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Petraglia, Michael D.
Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Max Planck Society;

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https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2020/09/14/6.38.eaba8940.DC1
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Citation

Stewart, M., Clark-Wilson, R., Breeze, P. S., Janulis, K., Candy, I., Armitage, S. J., et al. (2020). Human footprints provide snapshot of last interglacial ecology in the Arabian interior. Science Advances, 6(38): eaba8940. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba8940.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-2DD6-6

Abstract

The nature of human dispersals out of Africa has remained elusive because of the poor resolution of paleoecological data in direct association with remains of the earliest non-African people. Here, we report hominin and non-hominin mammalian tracks from an ancient lake deposit in the Arabian Peninsula, dated within the last interglacial. The findings, it is argued, likely represent the oldest securely dated evidence for Homo sapiens in Arabia. The paleoecological evidence indicates a well-watered semi-arid grassland setting during human movements into the Nefud Desert of Saudi Arabia. We conclude that visitation to the lake was transient, likely serving as a place to drink and to forage, and that late Pleistocene human and mammalian migrations and landscape use patterns in Arabia were inexorably linked.