Whether via the Levantine corridor (from Africa to Western Asia through Sinai), the Arabian corridor (across the Bab al-Mandeb strait from the Horn of Africa to Yemen), or both, stone tool-using hominins reached the Arabian Peninsula, perhaps as early as 1-1.2 million years ago. The earliest dated remains at ‘Ubeidiya in Israel, just north of Arabia, have been placed at around 1.4-1 million years ago. There, Homo ergaster used stone tools of Acheulean type, including large hand axes and large flakes. Comparable Acheulean (Lower Palaeolithic) material has been found on open-air sites in northern Saudi Arabia and in caves in Yemen. Potentially older pebble tools, resembling Oldowan material in East Africa, have been found on surface sites in the Wadi Shahar and at Al-Guza cave (Yemen), but their attribution remains unconfirmed.
Many more Middle Palaeolithic sites, showing Levallois-style flaking technology and a Mousterian industry, characterized by flakes and blades, are known in both northwestern and southwestern Arabia, although most of these are surface sites and none has been excavated to date. Whether these sites were inhabited by Homo neanderthalensis can only be determined when skeletal remains are excavated at an Arabian site.
Upper Palaeolithic open-air sites with sidescrapers and bifacial foliates have been documented throughout western Arabia and, more recently, south of Bir Khasfa in the Wadi Arah of Oman. Typologically this material shows clear links to East African, rather than Zagros Mousterian industries.
World History
