It has long been acknowledged that Homo sapiens – the ancestors of humans – originated in Africa.

It is no coincidence that ancient archaeological sites – including the Cradle of Humankind in South Africa – exhibit the earliest evidence of our species living on Earth

But how so many Homo sapiens went from living in Africa 300,000 years ago, to migrating to Eurasia around 70,000 years ago has been something of a question mark for researchers; what route did they take, and how did they adapt to such a different climate?

However, a recent study from an international team of researchers led by Dr Monika Markowska from Northumbria University in the UK evidences a migration route that has surprised scientists and anthropologists, providing new evidence to support Homo sapiens travelling through the Saharo-Arabian desert.

Recently published in the journal Nature, the team’s findings focus on evidence derived from mineral deposits obtained from caves in Saudi Arabia.

Through the study – which included other researchers from across the world – evidence from stalactites and stalagmites helped the team to build a clear image of the region’s historic climate, with the evidence revealing some big surprises.

Though the Saharo-Arabian Desert is now known as a very dry place, in the past it seems that the desert was humid and full of green life.

And with this image of lush vegetation and regular precipitation, the area was a clear route for migration, as Dr Markowska explains in a statement:

“Historically, the dry conditions of the Saharo-Arabian Desert have been proposed as a significant barrier to the dispersal of plants, animals, and early humans between Africa and Eurasia, but these findings shed new light on this hitherto unrecognised but important crossroad between Africa and Eurasia.”

According to Saudi archaeologist Faisal al-Jibrin, this new information plays a huge part in highlighting the importance of the Arabian Peninsula in defining human history. In the statement, al-Jibrin continued:

“Arabia has traditionally been overlooked in Africa-Eurasia dispersals, but studies like ours increasingly reveal its central place in mammalian and hominin migrations.”

This information can only enhance our understanding of how Homo sapiens dispersed across the planet, as well as providing a clearer overview of how the Earth’s changing climate caused flora and fauna to adapt over millions of years.

The new climatic record, the most detailed of its kind, explains how the region went through cycles over 8 million years of higher rainfall thanks to summer weather fronts reaching north from the tropics, as Markowska continued:

“Our findings highlighted that, as the monsoon’s influence weakened over time, precipitation during humid intervals decreased and became more variable. This coincided with enhanced polar ice cover over the Northern Hemisphere during the Pleistocene epoch. Our research is one of the longest terrestrial records ever published.”

With a greater understanding of how our planet’s climate changed in the past, and how our ancestors adapted to it, we can also get some more understanding of the trajectory our environment could be following into the future, in respond to both natural and human-influenced climate change.

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