Stone tools show lush green Arabia, according to Science (AAAS) News 1 September 2021 and Science Alert 2 September 2021 and Nature 1 September 2021, 10.1038/s41586-021-03863-y.
An international team of researchers have studied two sites in the Nefud Desert in northern Saudi Arabia and found thousands of stone tools, along with many animal fossils. The researchers went to the sites after satellite images suggested they were the remains of dried-up lakebeds. Onsite they dug trenches and used a dating method called thermoluminescence and concluded the region had undergone five cycles of climate change involving the formation and drying up of lakes over a period ranging from 400,000 years ago to 55,000 years ago.
The stone tools include hand axes, flakes and cleavers. No human fossils were found, but researchers suggest the sites had been occupied by “a diverse set of hominins, perhaps even different species” including Homo erectus, Neanderthals and modern humans.
The animal fossils found included hippos and cattle and other large vertebrates. Hippos are semi-aquatic animals, needing permanent water several metres deep, and the other large vertebrates could only survive where there was plentiful vegetation.
Researchers claim their findings show at “least five hominin expansions into the Arabian interior, coinciding with brief ‘green’ windows of reduced aridity”.
Links: Science, Science Alert
Editorial Comment: These findings confirm previous studies that the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding regions were once wet, well vegetated areas where humans and animals could thrive. It seems non-industrial non-human induced climate change is acceptable if it can be placed hundreds of thousands of years ago.
In fact, the “green Arabia” of the past is a reminder the earth has been drying out ever since Noah’s Flood, and as God told Noah after the flood, there would be extremes of climate from then until the world ends. This is also confirmed by evidence of the wetter lusher environments that once existed in other notoriously dry, uninhabitable places in the rest of the world, including the Sahara Desert and the arid regions of Australia.
If these Arabian sites were occupied during waves of human and animal migration, the direction was into Africa, not out of it. The real history of human migration over the earth starts with the judgement at the Tower of Babel, when intelligent and technologically sophisticated people rebelled against their Creator, and were scattered over the face of the earth. As they moved into new areas, they had to use whatever resources were available to make tools and artefacts. If suitable rock was available, they made stone tools. There is nothing simple or primitive about stone tools. They require a great deal of skill to make, along with understanding of the properties of rock in order to select appropriate starting materials to make them
Creation Research News 15 September 2021
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