Israeli Archeologists Claim Early Humans Left Africa Via Arabia

The general consensus is that the genus Homo began its evolutionary story in Africa and began spreading beyond the continent at least 2 million years ago. Not agreed is which route post-ape hominins, and then humans, took – if we can call it a route, Ruth Schuster reported for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Photo Insert: A man and his camels in the Arabian desert

The general assumption is that they left Africa via Egypt and the Sinai Peninsula, then the “Levantine corridor,” including Israel. Some have postulated another route via the Horn of Africa, possibly when sea levels were low, before the passage through Arabia.

Now a study published in Nature by Huw Groucutt and Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, with a large international team, has shown that Arabia was occupied by multiple waves of hominins and humans over the last 400,000 years, at least.

But they didn’t arrive via the Horn of Africa, they got there through Egypt and Sinai, Petraglia says. When did these early humans live in Arabia, and not only on the coast but inland? In the interludes when it was green, Groucutt and the researchers say.

There is ample evidence that Israel was on at least one route out of Africa. There are extensive Homo-related remains, mainly stone tools but also some bones in caves.

In the Nefud Desert of Arabia, exactly one prehistoric bone has been found from early human history – a finger bone dating to 85,000 years ago, identified as Homo sapiens, and there are no caves to speak of, Petraglia says. But there may be more to be found.

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