A wide range of artifacts recently discovered in the deserts of Oman are helping archaeologists understand migration patterns that took place in the region between 300,000 and 1.3 million years ago.
From finds made by the international team guided by the Institute of Archeology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic are ancient stone tools, a Neolithic tomb, eggshells belonging to an extinct species of ostrich and a trilith, a group of stones that some archaeologists have called an “Arabian Stonehenge”, in reference to the stone monument in England.
Trilith monument in Duqm. Photo: Roman Garba, Institute of Archeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Stone tools dating from 300,000 to 1.5 million years ago found on site in Oman. Photo: Czech Academy of Sciences
Archaeologists focused on two sites, one in Zufar province in southern Oman along the border with Yemen and the second in the Duqm region in central Oman. Although the sites today are largely dry and acrid, sporadic periods of humid climates over the millennia, or so-called green windows, have made the areas hospitable to human settlement. This led to the Arabian Peninsula serving as a natural migration route from the African continent to Eurasia.
A drone of one of the archaeological sites. Photo: Czech Academy of Sciences.
The trilith was discovered at the site of Zufar and is 2,000 years old. Triliths consist of three flat menhirs 50 to 80 centimeters high which together form a pyramid and are usually found in clusters, as was the case at Zufar.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of triliths have been discovered in the Arabian Peninsula. Archaeologists from Omar’s expedition used satellite images to locate them. Who built them and what they were used for remains a mystery, but researchers hope radiocarbon dating will start to offer clues.
“Triliths are one of the great mysteries of Arab archaeology,” Roman Garba from the Institute of Archeology of the Czech Academy of Sciences told Artnet. “The most famous trilith or trilithon monument, as a category, is Stonehenge. The Arabian trilithons probably have a similar ritual function, but are smaller and were built at a different time.
Photo: Czech Academy of Sciences.
At the Duqm site, archaeologists found a Neolithic tomb dating from 5,000 to 4,600 BCE. The tomb consisted of two circular burial chambers containing the skeletal remains of several dozen individuals.
Near the tomb, archaeologists discovered a series of more than 500 rock carvings depicting animals, including camels, horses, donkeys and turtles, as well as 200 inscriptions written in a South Arabian script that does not have yet been deciphered.
Rock engravings found in Oman. Photo: Czech Academy of Sciences.
The next step is to process the collected samples. Luminescence dating will tell us when the stone tools were buried and how the landscape was shaped. Radiocarbon dating will tell us when the trilithic monuments were used and will provide more accurate data on the migrations of the trilithic builders,” Garba said. “Our research aims to unravel human occupation in southern and central Oman – an understudied region of the Arabian Peninsula.”
The team is made up of 21 archaeologists and geologists from 10 countries and plans to return to Oman in the spring of 2024.
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