Green Arabia reported in BBC news 16 September 2015. The Arabian peninsula is one of the hottest, driest most barren places on the face of the earth today, but a multi-disciplinary team of scientists has combined satellite imaging studies and archaeological finds and concluded it was once a lush, green territory with many rivers and lakes.
Michael Petraglia, a professor of human evolution and prehistory at the School of Archaeology, Oxford University explained: “Innovative space shuttle technology has allowed the mapping of over 10,000 lakes across Arabia including the now barren Nafud desert. This finding links directly with the discovery of the remains of elephants, hippos, crocodile and molluscs at a couple of our sites in the Kingdom”.
The researchers suggest there was fresh drinking water available in the lakes, and some of these were linked, making it easy for migrating humans and animals to make their way across the peninsula. What are now dried up water courses are the sites of “palaeo-rivers” that can be mapped from space.
On the ground, archaeologists have found stone tools that are similar to those found in Africa, and they believe the Arabian Peninsula was an important site of human habitation as early humans migrated out of Africa. Rock art has also been found in central Saudi Arabia at the Jubbah palaeolake in the Hail region.
According to Ali Ibrahim Ghabban, deputy director of Saudi Commission on Tourism and National Heritage, “These sites are of global importance. They are the signatures of modern humans moving out of Africa”.
Editorial Comment: These studies do reveal the area was a suitable environment for both animals and people to live and move around and across, but the witnesses who were there inform us the direction of movement was not out of Africa, but into it.
Genesis tells us that within four generations after Noah’s flood, the people had gathered in the region of what is now Iraq and were building a tower to make a name for themselves, rather than obeying God’s instructions to spread out over the earth. God judged them by splitting them into different language groups, and these groups then dispersed from one another and became the ancestors of all the various ethnic and racial groups on the earth today.
Some would have gone south into the Arabian Peninsula, and from there to Africa and Asia. Today that would be an extremely perilous journey as the whole area is a hot, dry barren desert, but the “Green Arabia” found by this new research would have sustained people and animals as they spread out.
This is not the first present day desert to show signs of a wetter, greener past. Similar evidence has been found for the Sahara Desert and Australia. (Ref. deserts, Middle East, migration, environment, climate)
Evidence News vol. 15 No.18
7 October 2015
Creation Research Australia