Overview

• Researchers recorded 62 panels bearing 176 engravings at Jebel Arnaan, Jebel Mleiha and Jebel Misma on the southern edge of the Nefud Desert.
• Luminescence dating of stone tools recovered beneath the panels places the art between roughly 12,800 and 11,400 years ago.
• About 130 figures are life-size and naturalistic—mostly camels, plus ibex, equids, gazelles and an auroch—with some measuring up to 3 meters long.
• Several panels were carved on towering cliff faces up to 39 meters high, requiring artisans to work on narrow, downward-sloping ledges.
• Excavations yielded more than 530 tools, pigments and dentalium beads, including Levantine-style points that indicate long-distance links and a desert occupation that began about 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.