Overview
- The peer-reviewed study in Nature Communications documents three areas along the Nefud Desert margin with 62 panels bearing 176 engravings, most of them life-size and dominated by camels alongside ibex, gazelles, wild asses and an aurochs.
- Optically stimulated luminescence and radiocarbon analyses date the activity to roughly 12,800–11,400 years ago, with a stone tool at about 12,200 years providing an indirect age for the carving episodes.
- At Jebel Misma, artists worked on near-vertical faces as high as 34 to 39 meters on ledges only 30 to 50 centimeters wide, and some images are visible for a short window in morning light, indicating demanding access and deliberate placement.
- Overlapping styles and reworking show a phased tradition developing from naturalistic to more schematic forms, pointing to use and renewal across generations.
- Associated tools, arrowheads and hearths near the panels indicate repeated human presence over more than two millennia, supporting interpretations that the imagery marked rainy-season routes and ephemeral water sources.