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Groucutt HS, Grün R, Zalmout IAS, Drake NA, Armitage SJ, Candy I, Clark-Wilson R, Louys J, Breeze PS, Duval M, Buck LT, Kivell TL, Pomeroy E, Stephens NB, Stock JT, Stewart M, Price GJ, Kinsley L, Sung WW, Alsharekh A, Al-Omari A, Zahir M, Memesh AM, Abdulshakoor AJ, Al-Masari AM, Bahameem AA, Al Murayyi KMS, Zahrani B, Scerri ELM, Petraglia MD. Homo sapiens in Arabia by 85,000 years ago. Nat Ecol Evol 2018; 2:800-809. [PMID: 29632352 PMCID: PMC5935238 DOI: 10.1038/s41559-018-0518-2] [Citation(s) in RCA: 115] [Impact Index Per Article: 19.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/04/2017] [Accepted: 02/26/2018] [Indexed: 02/07/2023]
Abstract
Understanding the timing and character of the expansion of Homo sapiens out of Africa is critical for inferring the colonization and admixture processes that underpin global population history. It has been argued that dispersal out of Africa had an early phase, particularly ~130-90 thousand years ago (ka), that reached only the East Mediterranean Levant, and a later phase, ~60-50 ka, that extended across the diverse environments of Eurasia to Sahul. However, recent findings from East Asia and Sahul challenge this model. Here we show that H. sapiens was in the Arabian Peninsula before 85 ka. We describe the Al Wusta-1 (AW-1) intermediate phalanx from the site of Al Wusta in the Nefud desert, Saudi Arabia. AW-1 is the oldest directly dated fossil of our species outside Africa and the Levant. The palaeoenvironmental context of Al Wusta demonstrates that H. sapiens using Middle Palaeolithic stone tools dispersed into Arabia during a phase of increased precipitation driven by orbital forcing, in association with a primarily African fauna. A Bayesian model incorporating independent chronometric age estimates indicates a chronology for Al Wusta of ~95-86 ka, which we correlate with a humid episode in the later part of Marine Isotope Stage 5 known from various regional records. Al Wusta shows that early dispersals were more spatially and temporally extensive than previously thought. Early H. sapiens dispersals out of Africa were not limited to winter rainfall-fed Levantine Mediterranean woodlands immediately adjacent to Africa, but extended deep into the semi-arid grasslands of Arabia, facilitated by periods of enhanced monsoonal rainfall.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huw S Groucutt
- School of Archaeology, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK.
- Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
| | - Rainer Grün
- Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE), Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia
- Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
| | - Iyad A S Zalmout
- Saudi Geological Survey, Sedimentary Rocks and Palaeontology Department, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
| | - Nick A Drake
- Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
- Department of Geography, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Simon J Armitage
- Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK
- SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
| | - Ian Candy
- Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of London, London, UK
| | | | - Julien Louys
- Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE), Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia
| | - Paul S Breeze
- Department of Geography, King's College London, London, UK
| | - Mathieu Duval
- Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE), Environmental Futures Research Institute, Griffith University, Nathan, Queensland, Australia
- Geochronology, Centro Nacional de Investigación sobre la Evolución (CENIEH), Burgos, Spain
| | - Laura T Buck
- PAVE Research Group, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- Earth Sciences Department, Natural History Museum, London, UK
| | - Tracy L Kivell
- Skeletal Biology Research Centre, School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Emma Pomeroy
- PAVE Research Group, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK
| | - Nicholas B Stephens
- Department of Human Evolution, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
| | - Jay T Stock
- PAVE Research Group, Department of Archaeology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
- Department of Anthropology, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
| | - Mathew Stewart
- Palaeontology, Geobiology and Earth Archives Research Centre, School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Science, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
| | - Gilbert J Price
- School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, The University of Queensland, St Lucia, Queensland, Australia
| | - Leslie Kinsley
- Research School of Earth Sciences, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia
| | - Wing Wai Sung
- Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, London, UK
| | | | - Abdulaziz Al-Omari
- Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
| | - Muhammad Zahir
- Department of Archaeology, Hazara University, Mansehra, Pakistan
| | - Abdullah M Memesh
- Saudi Geological Survey, Sedimentary Rocks and Palaeontology Department, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
| | - Ammar J Abdulshakoor
- Saudi Geological Survey, Sedimentary Rocks and Palaeontology Department, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
| | - Abdu M Al-Masari
- Saudi Geological Survey, Sedimentary Rocks and Palaeontology Department, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
| | - Ahmed A Bahameem
- Saudi Geological Survey, Sedimentary Rocks and Palaeontology Department, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
| | | | - Badr Zahrani
- Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
| | - Eleanor L M Scerri
- School of Archaeology, Research Laboratory for Archaeology and the History of Art, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany
| | - Michael D Petraglia
- Department of Archaeology, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
- Human Origins Program, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA.
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