THE tale of human origins continues to throw up surprises. For many years, the generally accepted narrative was that our species emerged on the continent of Africa, before spreading to other continents around 60,000 years ago. It is certainly true that our origins lie primarily in Africa. But in this issue, we explore the crucial role that nearby Arabia played in human evolution.
Evidence unearthed in Stone Age Arabia points to a much richer story, in which human populations ebbed and flowed in this region over hundreds of thousands聽聽of years as the climate shifted.
Advertisement
The remarkable discoveries from Arabia remind us that, when it comes to the study of human evolution, much of the planet is yet to be explored. The systematic study of Arabian prehistory is barely more than a decade old. Many of the researchers who work there were told not to bother because 鈥渢here was no prehistory in Arabia鈥� and were even laughed at.
Those researchers are getting the last laugh. As the feature explains, it turns out there is an enormous amount of prehistory in Arabia: there are dozens of archaeological sites, often with rich collections of artefacts, that date back 500,000 years and perhaps further.
鈥淲hen it comes to the study of our evolution, much of the planet is yet to be explored鈥�
Some parts of the world have been thoroughly studied for hominin remains, such as east Africa and western Europe. But there are many more places like Arabia that are seriously underexplored. India is one such location, and even less is known from central Asian nations like Kyrgyzstan.
Even in Africa, for so long considered the only cradle of humanity, exploration has been largely focused on the east and south. Those places have yielded spectacular discoveries, but in recent years some anthropologists have begun paying more attention to the previously neglected north and west 鈥� sometimes making incredible finds, like the oldest known members of our species that were identified in Morocco in 2017.
The more we step past our preconceptions about where our ancestors lived, the more we will find 鈥� and the deeper our understanding of our origins will become.
