A first-of-its-kind study in northwestern Saudi Arabia suggests that humans and their livestock have been using a cave for shelter sporadically for up to 10,000 years. The finding1 offers insight into the region's history and ecology. In the past decade, satellite data and fossil finds have suggested that the Arabian Peninsula was not always an arid desert. Periods when the region contained lakes and lush greenery might have drawn people and animals there from Africa, according to the study's authors. 'Today, it's a fairly harsh environment,' says study co-author Mathew Stewart, a zooarchaeologist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia. Across the surface of Saudi Arabia, 'the fossil record is just horrendous', he says. Wind and scorching heat reduce bones and artefacts to dust, making them difficult to study. But in 2018, Stewart and his colleagues described an 88,000-year-old finger bone from the Saudi Arabian desert2 ' one of the oldest human fossils found outside of...
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