Cool Finds

Researchers Discover 12,000-Year-Old Life-Size Animal Engravings in Saudi Arabia

The findings address an important gap in the region’s archaeological record and history

Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent

October 2, 2025

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Researchers in northern Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert have discovered life-size engravings of animals likely dating to between 11,400 and 12,800 years ago, shedding light on prehistoric human presence in the region and filling in a significant archaeological gap. They describe their findings in a study published in the journal Nature Communications this week.

While evidence in the area, including monumental rock art, points to human settlement during a humid spell between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, archaeologists have found very little proof of human presence in northern Arabia between 10,000 and about 25,000 years ago. That earlier time period coincides with the end of the Last Glacial Maximum, and researchers previously suspected humans had left the area in search of a more hospitable climate.

In the recent study, however, the team found over 176 engravings in three previously unexplored areas, including 130 images of life-size animals such as camels, ibex, wild donkeys, gazelles and aurochs (an extinct cattle ancestor), after a tip from a local amateur archaeology enthusiast.

“We got really lucky with this discovery,” lead study author Maria Guagnin, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany, tells the New York Times’ Franz Lidz, speaking specifically about a panel on a mountain called Jebel Misma. “The engravings are so faded that they are only visible for about 90 minutes in the morning, when the sun rises over the mountain and the light hits the rock art at just the right moment.”

While Guagnin and her colleagues can’t directly date the engravings themselves, they can estimate their age by investigating that of nearby sediment layers where they found tools, Australia Broadcasting Corporation’s Ellen Phiddian reports. Their dating suggests the engravings are 11,400 to 12,800 years old, implying that humans returned to the area around 2,000 years earlier than previously thought.

The study shows that “humans were able to survive in the desert very early on, much earlier than we thought and in much harsher conditions than we thought,” Guagnin tells Live Science’s Sophie Berdugo.

But they likely had a little help from nature. The team’s sediment analysis suggests that from around 13,000 to 16,000 years ago, the region’s otherwise arid environment was dotted with seasonal lakes. These sources of water would have supported the rock artists’ communities—and the rock art, the researchers suggest, might identify these ancient water sources.

What’s more, the hundreds of excavated tools and other artifacts indicate a possible connection to other Middle Eastern cultures of the time. The researchers also found arrowheads, stone beads and a bead made from a seashell at the site—the same types of objects used by communities in the more northerly Levant.

“This paper provides evidence suggesting that people were not only in northern Arabia 12,000 years ago,” Hugh Thomas, an archaeologist at the University of Sydney who did not participate in the study, tells the New York Times, “but were creating complex rock art and producing tools suggestive of contact with the Levant.”

Margherita Bassi | Read More

Margherita Bassi is a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel, Discover magazine, Live Science, Atlas Obscura and Hidden Compass.