Monumental Rock Art: Humans Thrived in Arab. Desert During Pleistocene-Holocene

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ano-ther

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Rock ArtArchaeologyClimate Change

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Rock Art

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Researchers discovered monumental rock art in Saudi Arabia, indicating human habitation in the region during the Pleistocene-Holocene period, sparking discussion on the climate and human connection.

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Discussion (24 comments)

Showing 23 comments of 24

encyclopedism

3 months ago

1 reply

Absolutely fascinating. I'm surprised by the quality. Indicative of both a keen eye and a fine skill for art.

c420

3 months ago

4 replies

This isn't meant as a criticism of you personally, but rather of the general tendency to label all petroglyphs and pictographs as "(rock) art." There's no evidence that these were viewed that way by their creators, and using that term can bias how we interpret them

MisterTea

3 months ago

1 reply

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroglyph

"A petroglyph is an image created by removing part of a rock surface by incising, picking, carving, or abrading, as a form of rock art."

jhbadger

3 months ago

3 replies

I think the argument is there is a distinction to be made between signs that were made for practical purposes (as a sort of proto-writing) versus ones that were made to be pretty. We don't obviously know why these signs were made, but the the hypothesis that they were there to guide travelers to water sources suggests the former.

bawolff

3 months ago

Why not both? A lot of art has practical purposes.

MisterTea

3 months ago

> practical purposes (as a sort of proto-writing) versus ones that were made to be pretty.

Why not both? It's obvious some effort was put into carving the figures as they look pretty to me. I am sure some people were better than others at making rock carvings making them artists IMO.

nkrisc

3 months ago

> I think the argument is there is a distinction to be made between signs that were made for practical purposes (as a sort of proto-writing) versus ones that were made to be pretty.

That still fails to distinguish between "art" and "not-art". Your faulty assumption is that art can not serve a practical purpose.

robgibbons

3 months ago

1 reply

When the flush of a newborn sun fell first on Eden's green and gold, Our father Adam sat under the Tree and scratched with a stick in the mold; And the first rude sketch that the world had seen was joy to his mighty heart, Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves: "It's pretty, but is it Art?"

— Rudyard Kipling, The Conundrum of the Workshops

tristramb

3 months ago

+1 for quoting Kipling in 2025

hnhg

3 months ago

You’re right, it’s not art until the artist has shown at a reputable gallery and sold their first piece to a collector.

colechristensen

3 months ago

"art" as a separate concept which is only for expression or decoration or things along those lines is relatively modern

Muromec

3 months ago

2 replies

Was the climate different back then? How can one thrive in the desert

proxysna

3 months ago

1 reply

People lived in arid places for as long we have existed. Civilizations rose and fell in deserts. Depicting these places as barren lifeless voids is a relatively new thing usually used to minimize the impact of whatever the current power is doing there (i.e. extraction, murder, exploitation). There is a good book about that "Deserts are not empty".

chrisco255

3 months ago

1 reply

Wow, what a tangent! The Sahara is extremely inhospitable and was harsh enough to separate human populations for long enough that it lead to racial differentiation between sub-Saharan Africans and north Africans.

proxysna

3 months ago

1 reply

Yeah, because clearly Sahara is the only desert on Earth. And ofc, all of Sahara is like that through and through.

chrisco255

3 months ago

1 reply

Uh, the Sahara is absolutely massive and insanely deadly for the unprepared and challenging even for the prepared. Especially in the context of ancient times, it was an almost sure death to enter the Sahara in an attempt to cross it. Temps swing from 100F (38C) to 120F (49C) during the day to below freezing at night in the winter. Water is extremely scarce. It is 3.6 million sq miles or 9.2 million sq km.

It spans huge across Africa. It's part of the same climate system and cycles as the Arab desert.

If an environmental feature leads to racial and species adaptations, you should note that its not some propaganda but an actual feature of physical reality that nature and mankind had to work around (and largely avoid).

You should also avoid assuming that everything is a conspiracy. Deserts are actually very harsh and deadly especially without motorized vehicles and modern infrastructure like paved roads and electricity.

proxysna

3 months ago

Sure, never said anything about it being a nice place to be, but whatever.

libraryatnight

3 months ago

1 reply

In Arizona one example is the Hohokam: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohokam

They built canals for farming and understood how to use wild plants. Other cultures ( Akimel Oʼodham for one) are also interesting to read about how they lived.

AlotOfReading

3 months ago

Hohokam and the O'odham are related in much the same way the US is related to the British empire. One descends from the other.

profsummergig

3 months ago

2 replies

I've read/heard that the Sahara was a rainforest around 6,000 BCE (or at least the area around the Great Pyramids was).

Why do we believe that what is now Saudi Arabia was a desert in 11,000 BCE?

sligor

3 months ago

it was greener (grassland, savannas) but definitely not a rain forest. And in fact it was also the same for Arabia. More grassland and savannas than today.

But it was only partial: there was some desert area too. They were just not a large and mostly very dry desert like today.

ijk

3 months ago

Not rainforest, but rather savanna [1].

The Arabian desert is technically considered to be part of the Sahara, climate-wise, and participes in the same cycle [2].

This article is about researching evidence for ehat those transitions looked like, focusing on evidence that dates around the end of that particular dry period, pre-Holocene.

> Prior to the onset of the Holocene humid period, little is known about the relatively arid period spanning the end of the Pleistocene and the earliest Holocene in Arabia. An absence of dated archaeological sites has led to a presumed absence of human occupation of the Arabian interior. However, superimpositions in the rock art record appear to show earlier phases of human activity, prior to the arrival of domesticated livestock25.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period

[2]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/green...

roughly

3 months ago

The panels at Jeba Misa caught me for a second - they reminded me of graffiti on high buildings and overpasses and the like.

As an anthropology aficionado, I’m supposed to say we don’t know the purpose of these artifacts and any attempt to guess would be cultural projection, but privately I’m taking some comfort in the human connection.

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