Saudi Heritage Commission Unearths Neolithic Human Activity Traces in Jabal Irf

Saudi Heritage Commission Unearths Neolithic Human Activity Traces in Jabal Irf

The Saudi Heritage Commission, in cooperation with the German Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Geoanthropology in the Green Arabia Project, revealed one of the most significant sites of the prehistoric period near Jabal Irf in Hail region. The site study was published in an article in PLOS ONE magazine.

A scientific team that participated in the project—including researchers and specialists from the Kingdom, Australia, Britain, Italy, and the United States in various specializations of the prehistoric period—is studying numerous archaeological materials from different sites dating back to the Neolithic period.

Jabal Irf is located in a lake basin within the Jubbah Oasis, north of the city of Hail and south of the Nafud Desert.

The site was found to date back to the Neolithic, through archaeological evidence, the results of laboratory and comparative analyses that showed a little bit about the role of this period and its cultural connotations.

The site is also a unique natural landscape from the Neolithic, containing evidence of stone manufacturing where there was a rock shelter and an open site containing traces of settlement and seasonal human activity dating from the middle and late Holocene era.

The results of laboratory analyses of radiocarbon (C14) indicate that the peak of human