Stone Blades Crafted by Homo Sapiens Provide Evidence of Systematic Production of Tools in the Arabian Peninsula
It is well-known that modern humans ventured out of Africa to make settlements all over the world. However, the routes they followed have always been a question that has invited multiple speculations. A collection of artifacts from the town of Al Madam in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has proposed a new theory regarding this topic of modern human arrival in the world. Findings regarding these objects have been published in the journal Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences.
The objects were located at Jebel Faya, an archeological site that has been analyzed for years by experts. The study focuses on a form of stone assemblage archaeologists spotted at the site. The cache contained a collection of tools and blades. These objects date back to around 80,000 years ago, as per examinations. In the assemblage, many tools had features like long flakes accompanied by parallel edges. Researchers believe such characteristics can only be created by homo sapiens. Furthermore, the way the blades in the assemblage were cut out suggested that they were manufactured out of an intentional production effort. If the assertion turns out to be true, the finding is the earliest known evidence of systematic production in the Arabian Peninsula.
The finding implies that there was a human settlement in South Arabia just after humans started migrating out of Africa. "Our results indicate that South Arabia played a completely different role in the establishment and cultural diversification of Homo Sapiens populations in Southwest Asia than the north of the peninsula," said Dr. Knut Bretzke from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, stated The Jerusalem Post.
Hence, it can be claimed that humans moving out of Africa were not just acting like nomads, they were also making bases in some places. This further suggests that the place possibly fell in one of the many routes humans took while moving out of Africa. "The finds presented thus provide new evidence to better understand and classify the temporal and spatial course of the spread of early Homo sapiens populations from Africa to Asia. The global spread of Homo sapiens occurred in several waves, which began at least 150,000 years ago," Dr. Bretzke said, according to All That's Interesting. "The results now presented indicate that around 80,000 years ago one of the waves of spread ran along the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula." Researchers believe this is enough evidence to revisit the present assertions regarding the movement of humans from Africa to Asia, and the entire world.
Experts speculate that the stone assemblage could have been established by groups intending to migrate. The people may have figured out that they would need weapons to protect themselves and hunt for food, hence they set up a production unit. To this date, no human remains from the Paleolithic period have been spotted in South Arabia. Researchers think this is because the humans who set base here, did not stay for long and moved north. The study came up with this assertion because the period to which the assemblage belongs also incorporates the end of favorable weather conditions in the Arabian Peninsula. In the past, scientists thought the phenomenon forced humans back to Africa, but the new study postulates they went further north.