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Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

#101

Post by cbHXBY1D »

ducktective wrote: post #76
AlotOfReading wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have still been hot and relatively arid, just less so. These camels are native to all of North Africa, Arabia, and the middle east. There's a lot of different environments in that range.

The theory parent is mentioning, doesn't just talk about "less hot and less arid" but a lush green and very favorable for agriculture. If these people went as far as to carve camels in stones, that would mean these animals were prevalent in their areas and way of life which is in direct conflict with assuming their land were anything but hot and arid. I have heard of the theory about different climate of Egypt and Ir…

In the book, The Fate of Rome: Climate, Disease, and the End of an Empire, the author goes over Ptolemy's historical records of rain in Alexandria and compares it to today. In short, Alexandria used to get continual rain throughout the year whereas today it gets rain from October to March and then not much else. I believe it's in chapter 2 if anyone wants to look at the charts on the Amazon preview.

Re: Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

#102

Post by AlotOfReading »

sophacles wrote: post #98
AlotOfReading wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the location. You usually don't release wide landscape shots if that's a major concern, but super localized photos aren't necessarily an issue. Not all areas take the same degree of precaution though (e.g., scheduled monuments in the UK are pretty much public). Anyway, if you'd like an example of an "onsite" photo, I've uploaded one from an ancient settlement (2k+ years old): https://i.imgur.com/0ITzYZD.pn…

Thanks for the example! I'm not so good at sleuthing things from photos, so no bonus points for me :D. I sort of see what you mean about "unremarkable", at least without context. Knowing its an archaeological site of course raises questions: What does an archaeologist see in those rocks that I don't? What made people settle here 2kya (besides the water source)? Why dig here to begin with (instead of a km either direc…

The key feature is actually the little slope you can see in profile. That's the flat land above the river being eroded down into the waterway, exposing subsurface materials. Some of the rocks had fallen out of that bank and it looked suspiciously anthropogenic. We were already in the area looking along that river because the statistical model of the landscape built up over previous expeditions + other evidence indicated that there should be something to find. There were a number of other sites (e.g. lithic production) found the same way. These rocks in particular were probably to support something like semi-permanent tent poles.

As for timing, people had been in the area since the last glacial maximum. I actually have photos of a blade from prior to the LGM in a nearby area, but it has colleagues visible in it. We simply haven't found evidence of people building these kinds of structures much prior to then in that area. I should mention that I'm deliberately underestimating this particular site's age because definitive dating hadn't come back last time I heard and it makes the guessing harder.

Re: Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

#103

Post by valarauko »

betwixthewires wrote: post #84
shusaku wrote: post #41

> the time of the statues’ creation, around the sixth millennium B.C.E., the Arabian Peninsula was filled with grassland and much wetter than it is now. We’re camels significantly different during this time? How much of their current features are things evolved to deal with the desert climate?

They were very much like they are now, not different physiology in any recognizable way. But they're very adaptable creatures. They're not truly native to that region, they are actually from North America, specifically the northern latitudes. That should give you an idea of how adaptable they are.

> They're not truly native to that region, they are actually from North America, specifically the northern latitudes.

These Dromedary camels, Camelus dromedarius, are very much native to the region. The Dromedary likely evolved right in the Arabian peninsula, having separated from the Bactrian of Central Asia more than a million years ago. The North American ancestor, Paracamelus, arrived in Eurasia maybe 7.5 million years ago. While North America is the home of the last common ancestor of modern camelids, it is not the native home of any modern camels.

Re: Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

#104

Post by patall »

ducktective wrote: post #66
teleforce wrote: post #40

The northern part of saudi Arabia is actually part of the Fertile Crescent also known as 'The Cradle of Civilization' extending from Iraq where human first started cultivating and herding animals [1]. Yes it's now mostly desert but it used to be greener than it's today. This is an excellent documentary where teams of archeological experts from around the world trying to unravel the mystery of one of the earliest man…

If the climate there was different 8k years ago, why did they depict camels which dwell deserts and hot climates?

The climate wasn't that different, just a little wetter. Also we don't know what wild dromedaries were like, given that they are extinct for 2000 years now.

And the depicted ones were almost certainly wild, given that dromedaries were domesticated only 4000 years ago, well past when the first pyramids were build.

Re: Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

#105

Post by anigbrowl »

AlotOfReading wrote: post #58
bruce343434 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems really standard for any archeological article, sadly. Every time with the bait.

It's harder than it looks. My own photos of my sites/finds have rarely turned out interesting either. Usually things are simply an unremarkable pile of stones, unidentifiable blobs, or far too massive for the camera. That's leaving aside the ethical issues with photographing funerary sites/remains, which most archaeologists avoid by simply not releasing any such photographs to the media.

Diagrams work great too but they require more work, skill, and $ than (maybe) paying an intern to write body copy.

Re: Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

#106

Post by AlotOfReading »

delecti wrote: post #100
irrational wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I doubt all the expert opinions on cave art. "This undoubtedly had ritual significance." BS. It was probably just some teenagers screwing around.

I wouldn't go too far in the opposite direction though. Teenagers screwing around is more likely to be lewd carvings than life-size carvings of a camel. A rule of thumb I've heard is that "ritual significance" is code for either "we have no idea" or "probably a sex toy", depending on context. In cases like this, I think the default assumption should be "probably art".

"ritual" is a pretty general term that doesn't quite match its colloquial meaning and generally doesn't have anything to do with sex toys. Imagine you find an old PCB that you weren't quite sure the purpose of. Is it unfair to call it "electronic" when there's a more specific term that could be applied if you knew what its purpose was? The same objection applies equally to "art".

Re: Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

#107

Post by simonh »

afterburner wrote: post #74
illwrks wrote: post #22

I was about to say they have a powerful imagination to see camels in that eroded rock... however after a quick search, there are better photos online: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-...

That article only mentions 2000 year old sculptures, not 8000, so maybe that one just hasn't been as weather worn yet.

It sounds like you only skim read the first paragraph.

The article says they were thought to be 2000 years old but have recently been found to be 6000 years older than that. The second paragraph makes the new dating range explicit.

Re: Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

#108

Post by afterburner »

simonh wrote: post #107
afterburner wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article only mentions 2000 year old sculptures, not 8000, so maybe that one just hasn't been as weather worn yet.

It sounds like you only skim read the first paragraph. The article says they were thought to be 2000 years old but have recently been found to be 6000 years older than that. The second paragraph makes the new dating range explicit.

It sounds like you didn't read the comment I was actually replying to. It links to this article, different from OP, that does not mention what you claim it mentions: https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/MAGAZINE-2-000-year-old-...

Re: Life-size camel sculptures in Saudi Arabia are older than Stonehenge, pyramids

#110

Post by woko »

RandomWorker wrote: post #2

I find it amazing that early humans tended to make art of animals not humans. Like the cave paintings in France. It seems that early humans put the animals front and Center at some point.

Here are a few examples of human figures from 30,000 years ago [1], and 35,000 to 40,000 years ago [2, 3]. For comparison, the eroded camel sculptures are from 8,000 years ago at best.

Moreover, beware of possible biases which could explain what we see today: there is a difference between what we observe and what was. Remember for instance the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan [4], which happened less than 1,500 years after they were built. It is extremely unlikely that a work of art survives for 40,000 years, and some may be more likely to be destroyed than others, depending on location, weather, traditions, history, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Galgenberg

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus_of_Hohle_Fels

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adorant_from_the_Gei%C3%9Fenkl...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan

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