There are about a dozen camel statues carved in the mountains of northern Saudi Arabia. (Photos: Miscellaneous websites)
Riyadh: A global team of archaeologists has discovered that mountain sculptures of camels in northern Saudi Arabia were 7,000 to 8,000 years old, meaning they are about 4,000 years older than the Egyptian pyramids.
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports Latest issues According to a research paper published online in, these sculptures were first discovered in 2018 and were found to be 2000 years old after initial inspection.
Recent research using a state-of-the-art technique called “Portable X-ray Fluorescence Analysis” (pXRF analysis) has re-evaluated the history of these statues, as well as other artifacts from the surrounding area. Help sought.
Maria Gavagnen, lead author of the article and archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, says that although the statues are broken today and many of their panels have fallen off, they would have been magnificent thousands of years ago. ۔
There are about a dozen of these camel statues carved in the mountains.
In addition, statues of two other animals have been carved in the same mountains that may have been of donkeys, horses or mules. They are just as old.
In terms of their size, these sculptures are about the size of real camels, and the way they are made in the mountains suggests that the sculptors who carved them may have created these works of art by hanging them from ropes.
After examining other archeological finds in the surrounding area, experts believe that there was no permanent population, but a large number of people stayed for a few days at certain times of the year.
This indicates that the area was used for performing certain rituals; But it is not clear what those rituals were and how they were performed.
With what tools were these statues carved in the mountains? Experts say they did not find metal tools in the area, so there is a strong possibility that those who carved them used tools made of hard flint-like cherts.
This research can be very important in learning about the ancient history of Saudi Arabia and the first human beings there.
