Судлаачид эртний нууруудын эрэг орчмыг хүн төрөлхтөн суурьшихаас зайлсхийсэн нь усны хомсдол бус, харин багаж зэвсэг хийхэд тохиромжтой чулууны нөөц дутагдалтай байсантай холбоотой гэж таамаглаж байна.
Олон улсын судлаачдын баг Арабын хойгийн Руб-эль-Хали цөлд 35 хоногийн турш 1,500 километр замыг туулан судалгаа хийжээ. Тэд 125 байршилд ажиглалт явуулсны дүнд 55 цэгт эрт цагт цэнгэг усны нуур байсныг нотлох тунадас, дунгийн бүрхүүл, тэмээн хяруулын өндөгний хальс зэрэг ул мөрийг илрүүлсэн байна. Гэсэн хэдий ч тухайн газруудад хүн амьдарч байсныг гэрчлэх чулуун зэвсгийн олдвор тун ховор байжээ.
Nature сэтгүүлд нийтлэгдсэн судалгаагаар эртний хүмүүс зөвхөн усны нөөцөд бус, багаж зэвсэг урлахад шаардлагатай чулууны олдоцтой газрыг сонгон суурьшдаг байсныг тогтоов. Судлаачид эртний голын сүлжээ болон геологийн тогтоцыг 363 мэдэгдэж буй суурингийн байршилтай харьцуулан үзэхэд, хүн амын суурьшил нь ус болон боловсруулах боломжтой чулуу хосолсон бүсүүдэд төвлөрч байжээ.
Арабын хойгийн ус ихтэй нутгуудын 57 хүртэлх хувь нь багаж зэвсэг хийхэд тохиромжгүй чулуулгаас бүрддэг нь тогтоогдсон байна. Энэхүү олдвор нь Ливи, Египет, Төвд зэрэг бүс нутгуудтай ижил төстэй загварыг харуулж байгаа бөгөөд чулуун зэвсэг ашигладаг хүн амын суурьшлын хүрээг тодорхойлоход геологийн хүчин зүйлийг харгалзан үзэх нь чухал болохыг эрдэмтэд санууллаа. Гэвч энэ нь тус бүс нутаг бүхэлдээ эзгүй байсан гэсэн үг биш бөгөөд хойгийн бусад хэсгээс олдсон хадны зураг, хөшөө дурсгалууд нь хүн төрөлхтөн тухайн бүс нутагт идэвхтэй үйл ажиллагаа явуулж байсныг баталж байна.
Дэлгэрэнгүйг эх сурвалжаас харах
↓Эх сурвалжийг нээх ↓
Thousands of years ago, parts of the Arabian Peninsula were filled with freshwater lakes and wildlife. Yet surprisingly few traces of human activity have been found there. A new study suggests the reason wasn’t a lack of water, but something much less obvious: the right kind of stone.
Today, much of southern Arabia is covered by enormous stretches of desert. But the landscape looked very different during wetter periods, when lakes and vegetation spread across areas that are now almost completely dry. These conditions might seem ideal for prehistoric communities looking for places to live and find food.
So why are signs of ancient human activity so hard to find? An international team of researchers set out to investigate, traveling deep into one of the world’s largest deserts. Their findings, published in Nature, reveal how access to stone suitable for making tools may have influenced where Stone Age populations settled.
A Mystery Hidden in the Desert
The Rub’ al Khali, better known as the Empty Quarter, stretches across Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Today, it’s a vast landscape of sand dunes, with very little water and few inhabitants. But thousands of years ago, parts of this desert were home to freshwater lakes and wildlife.
In late 2023, a team of scientists spent 35 days traveling around 1,500 kilometers (932 miles) across the desert. They examined different locations, searching for clues about the region’s ancient environment. The researchers investigated 125 locations, finding clear evidence of ancient freshwater lakes at 55 of them. Among their discoveries were lake sediments, freshwater snail shells, and ostrich eggshells, all pointing to a much wetter landscape.
What caught the researchers’ attention was what they didn’t find. Despite the abundance of ancient water sources, stone tools were surprisingly rare across the sites they examined. The region appeared to have everything early humans needed to survive, yet the archaeological evidence suggested that people either rarely occupied these areas or left very little behind.
Water Wasn’t the Problem, Stone Was
For Stone Age communities, finding freshwater was only part of the challenge. They also needed materials to make the tools used in everyday life. And not just any rock would do. Early humans depended on stone that could be broken and shaped into sharp tools through a process known as knapping. Without suitable materials nearby, producing these tools became much more difficult.
To understand whether this explained the mystery, researchers reconstructed ancient river networks and examined the geological formations of the Arabian Peninsula. They then compared this information with the locations of 363 known prehistoric human sites. The results revealed a pattern: human occupation tended to concentrate in places where both freshwater and workable stone were available.
According to the study published in Nature, up to 57% of water-rich terrain across the Arabian Peninsula lies on geological formations that lack stone suitable for toolmaking. That means a large portion of the region’s ancient lakeside environments may have lacked a resource prehistoric communities depended on.
Ancient Humans Had a Few Surprises Up Their Sleeves
Researchers identified similar relationships between human occupation and stone resources in Libya, Egypt, Tibet, South Africa, and North America. These examples indicate that prehistoric populations often favored places where they could find suitable stone, rather than simply settling near abundant water. The study’s authors warn that:
“Dispersal models that omit raw-material geology may systematically overestimate the habitable range of stone-tool-dependent populations.”
Still, this doesn’t mean prehistoric humans completely avoided Arabia. As IFLScience reports, archaeological discoveries elsewhere on the peninsula include ancient rock art and enormous stone monuments, showing that human communities did establish themselves in the region. The scarcity of tools in the Empty Quarter therefore points to a more localized pattern, rather than an entirely uninhabited peninsula.
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