Abstract
The Fertile Crescent region, spanning from the upper Euphrates to the head of the Gulf of Aqaba, witnessed the earliest transition in the world from hunting and gathering wild foods to farming domesticates. Natufian Epipalaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic (PPN) communities in this region created distinctive stone tools across the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Here we present archaeological evidence from the site of Sahout, demonstrating that communities using material culture characteristic of the Natufian and PPN were also present hundreds of kilometres south of the Fertile Crescent, in the much more arid interior of the Arabian Peninsula. Repeated occurrence of distinctive stone tools from 13.5 to 8.7 thousand years ago indicates intimate links to the Levant; showing both the far greater scale of these cultural connections than previously known, and the capacity of Natufian and PPN tool makers to subsist in marginal environments. Obsidian sourcing shows long-distance movement further southward into Arabia. At Sahout, PPN tools are associated with a regional rock art tradition of naturalistic life-sized camel engravings, which overlie representations of curvaceous women. The material culture of these communities suggests that long-term survival in relatively arid environments was based on a combination of local adaptation and a network of long-distance connections.
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All data used in this study are available in the Supplementary Information file. All data used to support our results was generated in our research.
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Acknowledgements
For permission to conduct research at Sahout we are grateful to HH Prince Badr Bin Abdullah Bin Farhan Al-Saud, Saudi Minister of Culture, Dr. Jasir Alherbish, CEO of the Saudi Heritage Commission, and Dr. Abdullah al-Zahrani, General Director for Archaeological Excavations. We thank Antonio Reiss for photography of artefacts in (Figs. 3 and 4). All opinions expressed herein belong to the researchers and do not necessarily reflect those of the Ministry of Culture.
Funding
Financial and logistic support in the field was provided by the Saudi Heritage Commission. Funding for fieldwork and research was provided by a British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant (SRG2223\231473 to MG and CS) and by the Max Planck Society (to MG). MG’s research was partly funded by the ‘Camel Research Grant Program’ offered by the Saudi Ministry of Culture. All opinions expressed herein belong to the researchers and do not necessarily reflect those of the Ministry of Culture. SJA’s contribution to this work was partly supported by the Research Council of Norway, through its Centres of Excellence funding scheme, SFF Centre for Early Sapiens Behaviour (SapienCE), project number 262618. We acknowledge funding from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) for baseline support to FvB. JB acknowledges support from the Leverhulme Trust (RPG-2017-087). AMA acknowledges the support of the Researchers Supporting Project number (RSP-2025/126), King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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**C.S.:** Conceptualization, Data Curation, Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing—Original Draft Preparation, Writing—Review & Editing. **M.G.** : Conceptualization, Data Curation, Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Visualization, Writing—Original Draft Preparation, Writing—Review & Editing. **F.A.:** Funding Acquisition, Investigation, Resources. **F.S.:** Data Curation, Investigation, Methodology. **M.S.:** Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing—Review & Editing. **C.R.:** Formal Analysis, Visualization, Writing—Review and Editing. **S.J.A.:** Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing—Review & Editing. **N.D.:** Data Curation, Investigation, Methodology, Writing—Original Draft Preparation, Writing—Review & Editing. **P.S.B.:** Data Curation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology. **F.V.B.:** Data Curation, Funding Acquisition, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing—Review & Editing. **F.A.A: ** Investigation. **M.A.:** Investigation. **A.A.:** Investigation. **J.A.:** Investigation. **J.B.:** Data Curation, Writing—Review & Editing. **A.M.A.:** Investigation, Writing—Review & Editing. **M.P.:** Investigation, Writing—Original Draft Preparation, Writing—Review & Editing. All authors reviewed the manuscript.
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Shipton, C., Guagnin, M., Al-Jibreen, F. et al. The Natufian Epipalaeolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic in the desert of northern Arabia. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-40541-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-40541-3
