Hominin Dispersal into the Nefud Desert and Middle Palaeolithic Settlement along the Jubbah Palaeolake, Northern Arabia

Northern Arabia. PLoS ONE 7(11): e49840. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0049840 Hominin Dispersal into the Nefud Desert and Middle Palaeolithic Settlement along the Jubbah Palaeolake, Northern Arabia Michael D. Petraglia 0 Abdullah Alsharekh 0 Paul Breeze 0 Chris Clarkson 0 Re my Crassard 0 Nick A. Drake 0 Huw S. Groucutt 0 Richard Jennings 0 Adrian G. Parker 0 Ash Parton 0 Richard G. Roberts 0 Ceri Shipton 0 Carney Matheson 0 Abdulaziz al-Omari 0 Margaret-Ashley Veall 0 Fred H. Smith, Illinois State University, United States of America 0 1 School of Archaeology, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford , Oxford , United Kingdom , 2 Human Origins Program, Smithsonian Institution , Washington, D. C. , United States of America, 3 Department of Archaeology, College of Tourism & Archaeology, King Saud University , Riyadh , Saudi Arabia , 4 Ministry of Higher Education , Riyadh , Saudi Arabia , 5 Department of Geography, King's College London , London , United Kingdom , 6 School of Social Science, University of Queensland , Brisbane, Queensland , Australia , 7 CNRS , Maison de l'Orient et de la Me diterrane e , Lyon , France , 8 Department of Archaeology , Connolly Building , University College Cork, Cork, Ireland, 9 Department of Anthropology and Geography, Oxford Brookes University , Oxford , United Kingdom , 10 Centre for Archaeological Science, School of Earth & Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong , Wollongong, New South Wales , Australia , 11 Department of Anthropology, Paleo-DNA Laboratory, Lakehead University , Ontario , Canada , 12 The Saudi General Commission for Tourism and Antiquities, Taif Antiquities Office, Taif , Saudi Arabia The Arabian Peninsula is a key region for understanding hominin dispersals and the effect of climate change on prehistoric demography, although little information on these topics is presently available owing to the poor preservation of archaeological sites in this desert environment. Here, we describe the discovery of three stratified and buried archaeological sites in the Nefud Desert, which includes the oldest dated occupation for the region. The stone tool assemblages are identified as a Middle Palaeolithic industry that includes Levallois manufacturing methods and the production of tools on flakes. Hominin occupations correspond with humid periods, particularly Marine Isotope Stages 7 and 5 of the Late Pleistocene. The Middle Palaeolithic occupations were situated along the Jubbah palaeolake-shores, in a grassland setting with some trees. Populations procured different raw materials across the lake region to manufacture stone tools, using the implements to process plants and animals. To reach the Jubbah palaeolake, Middle Palaeolithic populations travelled into the ameliorated Nefud Desert interior, possibly gaining access from multiple directions, either using routes from the north and west (the Levant and the Sinai), the north (the Mesopotamian plains and the Euphrates basin), or the east (the Persian Gulf). The Jubbah stone tool assemblages have their own suite of technological characters, but have types reminiscent of both African Middle Stone Age and Levantine Middle Palaeolithic industries. Comparative inter-regional analysis of core technology indicates morphological similarities with the Levantine Tabun C assemblage, associated with human fossils controversially identified as either Neanderthals or Homo sapiens. - Funding: This research was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Leakey Foundation, the European Research Council (no. 295719) and the Australian Research Council. The authors acknowledge the Australian Research Council for laboratory analysis and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for a doctoral studentship to HG. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Though climate change and its effect on people around the world today is receiving considerable attention from scholars, governments and the general public, we have little understanding about how past populations coped with and adjusted to marginal environments in many regions of the world. The vast desert regions of the Sahara and the Arabian Peninsula contain numerous archaeological sites, indicating that Pleistocene hominins penetrated these areas, living in more favourable habitats [1], [2]. However, until very recently, little information has been forthcoming about the age of the archaeological sites in arid zones, and hardly anything is known about the specific ecological settings that hominins occupied. This is an unfortunate situation as an understanding of the habitats in which hominins were living has implications about the peopling of Eurasia. The greening of desert areas would have attracted game and human populations, while conversely, increased aridity would have led to population contractions, and possibly population extinctions. Moreover, although geneticists and archaeologists have speculated about the generic routes of human movement outside of Africa [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], little systematic information has emerged about the nature and distribution of archaeological sites in the Arabian Peninsula, a critical geographic point in any discussion about out of Africa dispersal processes. With respect to the palaeoenvironments of Arabia, cave speleothem records and lacustrine and sand dune deposits indicate that the region experienced dramatic climatic oscillations between wet and dry periods [8], [9]. Significant increases in precipitation have occurred during each interglacial period since at least Marine Isotope (MIS) 9 (330,000 years ago, or ka), with extensive speleothem, calcrete, alluvial fan and lacustrine records providing evidence of pluvial conditions [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]. Although northwestern regions of the Arabian Peninsula appear to have experienced some degree of increased humidity during glacial phases such as MIS 4 [15], [16], the vast majority of Arabia experienced increased dune mobility under hyper-arid conditions [17], [18], making large areas of Arabia uninhabitable. Most archaeological sites in the Arabian Peninsula cannot be correlated with past environments as they are known from surface contexts, where chronometric dates and ecological information is not recoverable. Fortunately, several stratified archaeological sites have recently been investigated, making considerable contributions to our knowledge of Middle Palaeolithic occupation history. Middle Palaeolithic industries in Arabia are now known to date to MIS 5e [19] and later phases of phases of MIS 5 [19], [20], [21]. Middle Palaeolithic sites have not been dated to the arid period of MIS 4, although Shibat Dihya was occupied at 55 ka, at the beginning of MIS 3 [22]. The geographic location of the archaeological sites demo (...truncated)