News From The Extreme Events Research Group

New research shows that over the last 400,000 years, multiple pulses of increased rainfall transformed the generally arid Arabian Peninsula into a hospitable route for human population movements across Southwest Asia more

New archaeological research presents the oldest securely dated evidence for humans in Arabia more

New archaeological research in Saudi Arabia documents hundreds of stone structures interpreted as monumental sites where early pastoralists carried out rituals. In a new study published in The Holocene, researchers from the Max Planck Society in Jena together with Saudi and international collaborators, present the first detailed study of ‘mustatil’ stone structures in the Arabian Desert. These are vast structures made of stone piled into rectangles, which are some of the oldest large-scale structures in the world. They give insights into how early pastoralists survived in the challenging landscapes of semi-arid Arabia. more