RIYADH — The Saudi Commission for Tourism and National Heritage (SCTH) is all set to launch the ninth season of the "Green Arabian Peninsula" scientific project with the participation of a large contingent of Saudi officials and university students along with international experts. The National Heritage Sector at SCTH is undertaking the initiative, in partnership with King Saud University (KSU) and Saudi Geological Survey (SGS) at the local level, and with the German Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, Oxford University and the Australian University of Queensland at the international level. Rustom Al-Kubeissi, deputy chairman of the sector, said SCTH attaches great importance to the project due to the crucial discoveries that shed light on the historical status of the Kingdom as the cradle of human civilizations, the most important of which was the footsteps of an old human being on the shores of an old lake in the Nafud Dessert on the outskirts of Tabuk region that dates back to some 85,000 years ago. "This represents an astonishing and a very rare discovery that shows the wide spread of man outside Africa and his reach to the Arabian Peninsula as part of other human migration regions. Other discoveries include a finger of an adult human near the Wusta site at the Taima governorate that dates back to 85,000 years ago and it is more likely for the finger to belong to the first influxes of immigrants in the modern age to the Arabian Peninsula that was at that time green meadows and rich of rivers and lakes," he said. Al-Kubeissi noted that the Green Arabian Peninsula addresses the relation between climate changes that hit the Arabian Peninsula over the ages and the early settlement of mankind in the country and the human migration into it. "The projects of the blue and green Arabian Peninsula see the participation of several personnel from the antiquities sector, SGS, and archeologists from KSU, in addition to a number of Saudi university students, as part of an initiative by SCTH to transfer expertise to Saudi archeologists," he said noting that a number of university students, including those from KSU as well as from Hail and Jazan universities, are currently working in the project. Dr. Abdullah Al Zahrani, director general of the archeological research and studies center at SCTH, shed light on the current season works in the "Green Arabian Peninsula" and the "Blue Arabian Peninsula" projects. "Human migration from Africa is a main subject in the studies of the human development, where the lands of the Kingdom have an important role due to its geographical location between the continents in knowing the movement and transfer of mankind and the impact of climate change in forming the population history at the early beginning of the Ice Age." "With the importance of the Red Sea region for its being a corner where mankind once settled in the early beginning of the Ice Age "Pleistocene", the outcomes of the latest research stress that wild environment has a decisive significance in the spread of mankind and its many attempts to expand during the improved periods of the Ice Age, where the area was rich in its biodiversity and full of rivers, lakes, meadows and plains," he added. Studies showed that the Arabian desert has witnessed difficult circumstances that affected the fossils and their formation and changed their appearances, with shedding light on the history of the Arabian Peninsula and Africa in terms of old geography of living beings, from one side, and in the Levant from the other side. The study has concluded its results through previous seasons that the oldest migrations from Africa was not heading toward the Levant only, but they also extended to inside the Arabian Peninsula, where these studies in general give deep insights about the interaction of mankind, animals and the environment inside the regions of the Arabian Peninsula.
