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Saudi Archeologists Discover Oldest Human Bone | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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Al-Naslaa Rock Formation


Prince Sultan bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, president & chairman of the Board of the Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH), recently announced during a speech he made at the French Académie des Beaux-Arts the discovery of old human bones in the Kingdom.

According to researches and laboratory and archeological analyses, the bone is the middle part of the middle finger of a human being who lived 90,000 years ago, the oldest human trace found in the Arabian Peninsula to date.

According to the Commission, this discovery has been an important phase in research and works of excavation carried out by Saudi and international teams. It was also considered an important achievement for the Saudi researchers who participated in these missions and one of the most important outcomes of Prince Sultan’s support and care for the archeology sector in the Kingdom.

The discovery of the bone in Tayma governorate in Tabuk comes as a result of a scientific project implemented by the authorities in cooperation with Oxford University and a number of concerned entities in the Kingdom, including Aramco Company, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Geological Survey, King Saud University, and University Of Hail.

The project is part of “Green Arabia Conference,” which is a Saudi-British project for survey and excavation that has kicked off in 2012 to implement environmental-archeological studies of many historical sites in the Kingdom. The main goal was to study the likelihoods of expansion or extinction of human and animal troops and their adaptation with life conditions. The project has succeeded in setting serial dates for many historic and fossil sites that date back to 500 years.

The project has led to many other discoveries in many sites, including a big number of animals and mammal fossils in the Saudi deserts, and more discoveries are expected in the future.

The working team has also gathered information concerning the different types of environments and climates that controlled the Peninsula in the past.