Saudi Arabia finds 7,000-year-old animal traps

Abu Dhabi: A scientific team found stone animal traps in the Nafud desert in north-central Saudi Arabia, which are among the oldest stone traps in the world, dating back more than 7,000 years, local media reported.

Saudi Heritage Authority said the northern regions of the Kingdom witnessed an important cultural development about 5,000 years ago, as evidenced by the construction of huge places that included hundreds of large stone animal traps.

The discovery, published by the Holocene International Scientific Journal specialised in prehistoric studies, is part of field work for the Green Arabian Peninsula project led by the Heritage Authority with the participation of the German Max Planck Institute, the University of Oxford, and King Saud University.

The scientific field work carried out by the team dealt with the beginnings of the development of stone installations within their archaeological and environmental context, especially as the animal traps played a crucial role and reflected the development of human behavior through competition for pastures in difficult and unstable environments on the Arabian Peninsula, even in the humid times of the Holocene era, when the environment was going through periods of drought.

The animal traps dated back to 5000 to 2000 years BC. The results of the date analysis conducted on charcoal samples showed that they date from 5052 to 4942 years BC during, the Neolithic period, and from 2930 to 2770 years BC during the Bronze Age, while other samples from the site were dated from 786 to 666 BC, the Iron Age.

The comprehensive archaeological survey has worked for more than 40 years ago to record a large number of stone installations of varying shapes and sizes in the various regions of the Kingdom, and their results were published in the Saudi Antiquities Yearbook.