A finger bone in Arabia
A single human finger bone beside a vanished lake shows the desert was once a corridor.
- When
- Known to
- ± 5 thousand years
- Era
- Late Pleistocene, Quaternary
At Al Wusta in the Nefud Desert of Saudi Arabia, a human intermediate phalanx dated to about 88,000 years ago was found in sediments of a freshwater lake, surrounded by the bones of hippopotamus and wild cattle. During humid phases the Arabian interior held hundreds of lakes and was crossable grassland. The green Arabia phases, like the green Sahara phases, open and close the routes out of Africa on an orbital rhythm.