Notice how these sites, KAM 4 and Jubbah basins are in the interior of
the Arabian peninsula, not along the coast.

Multiple hominin dispersals into Southwest Asia over the past 400,000
years

Abstract

Pleistocene hominin dispersals out of, and back into, Africa
necessarily involved traversing the diverse and often challenging
environments of Southwest Asia. Archaeological and palaeontological
records from the Levantine woodland zone document major biological and
cultural shifts, such as alternating occupations by Homo sapiens and
Neanderthals. However, Late Quaternary cultural, biological and
environmental records from the vast arid zone that constitutes most of
Southwest Asia remain scarce, limiting regional-scale insights into
changes in hominin demography and behaviour. Here we report a series
of dated palaeolake sequences, associated with stone tool assemblages
and vertebrate fossils, from the Khall Amayshan 4 and Jubbah basins in
the Nefud Desert. These findings, including the oldest dated hominin
occupations in Arabia, reveal at least five hominin expansions into
the Arabian interior, coinciding with brief 'green' windows of reduced
aridity approximately 400, 300, 200, 130–75 and 55 thousand years ago.
Each occupation phase is characterized by a distinct form of material
culture, indicating colonization by diverse hominin groups, and a lack
of long-term Southwest Asian population continuity. Within a general
pattern of African and Eurasian hominin groups being separated by
Pleistocene Saharo-Arabian aridity, our findings reveal the tempo and
character of climatically modulated windows for dispersal and
admixture.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03863-y

On Friday 3 September 2021 at 13:46:55 UTC+1, Pandora wrote:
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03863-y

> Notice how these sites, KAM 4 and Jubbah basins are in the interior of
> the Arabian peninsula, not along the coast.

Lamppost archaeology. Coastal sites then
occupied are now under 50-100 metres of
water.

If you went on holiday, living in a flimsy tent
with a number of small children, where in the
region would you choose to go?

Yep -- that's the kind of site your great^10k-
grandmother would have chosen to raise
her kids.

The males would have sometimes ventured
inland in search of extra resources, but the
females and kids would have stayed in a
place where it didn't get too hot or too cold.