Overview

• An international team documented more than 60 panels with 176 engravings at Jebel Arnaan, Jebel Mleiha and Jebel Misma along the southern edge of the Nefud Desert.
• Most images are life-sized animals dominated by camels, with some panels carved up to 39 meters high on sheer cliffs in visually commanding locations.
• Luminescence dating of buried engraving tools and sediment analyses indicate activity between roughly 12,800 and 11,400 years ago, earlier than previous evidence for the region.
• Excavations recovered 532 stone tools, pigments and beads, including El Khiam and Helwan points that suggest long-distance links to Pre-Pottery Neolithic communities in the Levant.
• The Nature Communications study proposes the monumental imagery marked seasonal water sources and movement routes, pushing interior occupation back by about 2,000 years while noting the carvings themselves were not directly dated.