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Archaeologists identified more than 170 monumental engravings at three previously unexplored sites in Saudi Arabia. The images, made between 12,800 and 11,400 years ago, suggest organized human presence, migration routes, and territorial marks in the desert.
An archaeological discovery in northern Saudi Arabia is changing the understanding of who lived in the desert more than 12,000 years ago. Researchers documented 176 individual engravings on rock art panels spread across three previously unexplored sites in the region, with images measuring up to 3 meters in length.
The material was found on the southern edge of the Nefud Desert and was dated between 12,800 and 11,400 years ago, a period when seasonal lakes and temporary rivers reappeared after centuries of extreme aridity. For archaeologists, this is not just art: the figures seem to have served as marks of presence, territory, and movement in a hostile landscape.
The international team responsible for the study states that the panels help fill an important gap in Arabian archaeology between the Last Glacial Maximum and the beginning of the Holocene. And the details are impressive: besides the number of figures, some were carved on cliffs so high that they required work in narrow and dangerous locations.
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Giant engravings appeared at three new points in the region
The discoveries came from Jebel Arnaan, Jebel Mleiha, and Jebel Misma, areas that had not been explored before. In total, archaeologists recorded more than 60 rock art panels, with representations of camels, ibex, equids, gazelles, and aurochs.
Among the figures, 130 are detailed and life-sized. Some were carved on cliffs up to 39 meters high, in locations that dominate the desert landscape. According to the researchers, this shows that the effort to produce the images was too great to have been casual.
The images may have marked water, routes, and territory
The study indicates that the engravings emerged precisely when water began to circulate seasonally in the desert again. Sediment analysis confirmed the existence of ancient lakes and watercourses, crucial resources for human groups advancing into the region’s interior.
For the archaeologist Maria Guagnin from the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, these engravings “are not just rock art.” They would have functioned as statements of presence, access, and cultural identity.
Meanwhile, co-author Ceri Shipton from University College London states that the panels may have signaled territorial rights and also memory between generations, pointing to a more complex social organization than previously imagined for groups that lived in that arid environment.
Objects found near the engravings deepen the mystery
In addition to the images, the team located artifacts indicating distant connections. Among them were stone points in the Levantine El Khiam and Helwan style, green pigment, and dentalium beads. The collection suggests a link with Neolithic populations of the Levant in the Near East.
Even so, researchers emphasize that the scale, content, and position of the Arabian engravings are different from anything previously found in the area. According to Faisal Al-Jibreen from the Heritage Commission of the Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia, the symbolic form recorded on the panels reflects a unique cultural identity, adapted to a dry and challenging environment.
Study reinforces human presence in the desert during a decisive period
The research was published in the journal Nature Communications with the title “Monumental rock art illustrates that humans thrived in the Arabian Desert during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition.” According to the authors, the data show that human communities not only passed through the region: they adapted, circulated, and left lasting marks on the territory.
Michael Petraglia, leader of the Green Arabia Project, says that the interdisciplinary approach of the study begins to fill a critical gap in the archaeological record of northern Arabia. In the end, the panels found in the desert help tell a larger story about survival, mobility, and identity in one of the harshest environments on the planet.
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