Abstract
PRE-SUJMERIAN MAN IN ARABIA.βOn their return from Kish through the desert lying between Mesopotamia and Palestine in the winter of 1925β26, Mr. L. H. Dudley Buxton and Mr. Henry Field devoted to a search for evidence of the existence of early man in this area such time as was available during the halts of the armoured-car patrol which they accompanied by permission of the Air Marshal. In Discovery for April, the former describes the journey and the circumstances in which quite a considerable number of flint implements were found at each stage of the journey. It is interesting to note that the Arab desert police denied the use of flint for any purpose other than strike-a-lights, thus authenticating certain flakes of a somewhat modern appearance. Evidence the most definite in character was obtained at Landing Ground R, a number of implements of Aurignacian type being found. Near Air Force Landing Ground H was found a large lake of perhaps a hundred acres in extent but of not more than a foot deep. On the lower of two surfaces exposed in ancient times, a large number of small tools were found, the other surface showing no evidence of man's handiwork. The implements found on the journey as a whole belong to the middle and late palheolithic age, with one laurel-leaf arrow-head belonging probably to the new stone age. Although the desert conditions are not now such as to support human life, the fact that the implements are found in hollows and little dry valleys suggests that under different climatic conditions, such as probably prevailed in palheolithic times, water flowed down the valley bottoms. This upland divide thus furnishes evidence of man's existence at a period long anterior to that of the material from Mesopotamia itself, where nothing primitive but only the remains of a fairly advanced culture have as yet been found.
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Research Items. Nature 119, 651β653 (1927). https://doi.org/10.1038/119651a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/119651a0