PrehistoryMiddle Palaeolithic · Rub' al Khali, Arabian Peninsula
A 1,500-km expedition across Arabia's Empty Quarter found ancient lakes but not one stone tool
Early humans lived around the edges of the Rub' al Khali when it was green. A new study says they stayed away from its lakes because there was no stone to make tools.
In brief 3 key points
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- 55 ancient lake beds found on a 1,500-km survey of the Rub' al Khali
- No stone tools and no stone fit to make them anywhere in the interior
- Settlement followed water and stone together, not water alone
Between about 122,000 and 67,000 years ago, the Rub' al Khali in southern Arabia, today the largest sand sea in the world, held lakes. People were living at its edges at the same time. Yet a survey right across its interior has found no sign that they ever went in.
The researchers, publishing in Nature, think they know why. There was water, but no stone to make tools from.
Lakes, shells and ostrich eggshell, but no tools
The team crossed about 1,500 km of the desert and examined 125 localities. At 55 of them they found deposits of ancient lakes, with freshwater snails and clams, carbonate beds and fragments of ostrich eggshell. More than 95 per cent of the ground surface was visible.
Not a single stone tool turned up. Nor did any rock that could be knapped into one, except at the western and eastern ends of the route. Knappable stone appeared at only 10 of the 125 localities. In the central basin, the rocks that carry chert lie buried beneath younger sediments, and the nearest known usable outcrops are more than 200 km from the lake basins surveyed.
Around the margins of the desert, people did live in the same period: at Mundafan about 96,000 to 77,000 years ago, at Jebel Faya, at Umm al Sha'al and on the Dhofar Nejd plateau.
Water is not enough
Many models of early human dispersal predict where people could live mainly from climate and fresh water. The team built a model that also asks where usable stone occurs. Tested first against 301 Middle Palaeolithic findspots in Oman and then against 363 sites across the peninsula, it matched where sites are actually found better than water alone did.
Across Arabia, 57 per cent of the land within reach of water lies on rock with no knappable stone. The authors note similar patterns in Africa, North America and Asia, and warn that dispersal models without geology may overestimate where stone-tool users could live.
Sources (2)
Peer-reviewed study
- This Arabian desert was once a lush paradise. Why did ancient humans avoid it? (Nature: archaeology)
- Stone and water governed early human settlement of the desert (Nature: archaeology)
Paper: Stone and water governed early human settlement of the desert, Nature (2026)
Edited by Guiseppe Weijermars
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