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Levallois point showing the characteristic prepared-core stone-working technique of the Middle Palaeolithic.
Image Credit:
Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 3., via Wikimedia Commons
Stone Tools Suggest Neanderthals Reached Northern Arabia Around 55,000 Years Ago
A new archaeological study suggests that Neanderthals may have expanded farther south than previously demonstrated, reaching northern Arabia around 55,000 years ago. The evidence comes not from human fossils, but from distinctive patterns in Middle Palaeolithic stone tools.
Researchers examined technological variation in Levallois tools, stone blanks produced through a carefully prepared method of shaping a core before removing flakes, points or blades of predetermined form. The technique was widely used by both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens, meaning its presence alone cannot identify who made an assemblage.
The study instead asked whether subtle differences in the shape and production of Levallois blanks could reflect different population histories.
Researchers compiled measurements from 704 complete Levallois blanks recovered from 12 archaeological assemblages across Northeast Africa, Arabia and the Levant, dating between about 100,000 and 50,000 years ago. The comparison included sites associated with Homo sapiens as well as Levantine sites linked to Neanderthals.
They then tested a wide range of possible explanations for technological differences, including age, raw material, climate, geography, site type, occupation intensity and population history.
The results indicate that population history provided the strongest explanation for differences in Levallois blank shape, although factors such as site type also contributed. In particular, tools associated with Neanderthal populations showed patterns that differed statistically from those linked to Homo sapiens.
The researchers used these patterns to train statistical models capable of distinguishing between the two population histories. When tested against assemblages with existing attributions, the models agreed with the classifications more than 93 percent of the time.
The model was then applied to two important Arabian assemblages: Jebel Katefeh-1, or JKF-1, and Al-Marrat 3, both in northern Arabia.
New dating work was particularly important at JKF-1. Earlier estimates placed the occupation broadly between about 90,000 and 50,000 years ago, making it difficult to determine whether the tools belonged to a period dominated regionally by Homo sapiens or to the later expansion of Neanderthals.
New luminescence dating places the JKF-1 occupation at approximately 60,000–50,000 years ago, around the beginning of a wetter climatic phase when conditions in Arabia were becoming more favourable for human occupation.
When the stone tools from JKF-1 were entered into the model, most showed greater similarity to assemblages associated with Neanderthals than to those associated with Homo sapiens. One statistical model produced a median probability of about 78 percent for a Neanderthal attribution, while around a quarter of the analysed JKF-1 blanks returned probabilities above 95 percent. Results from the much smaller Al-Marrat 3 assemblage pointed in the same direction.
The researchers therefore propose that the technological differences between earlier Arabian occupations and these later sites may reflect a change in the populations occupying the region.
Earlier Middle Palaeolithic sites in Arabia, particularly those dating to Marine Isotope Stage 5, have generally been associated with Homo sapiens. By contrast, the approximately 55,000-year-old assemblages from JKF-1 and Al-Marrat 3 show stronger technological affinities with Neanderthal-associated sites farther north.
The study does not, however, claim that particular stone-tool technologies belonged exclusively to Neanderthals. The researchers stress that Levallois technology was shared among different human populations and that the conclusion depends on statistical patterns within a specific geographical and chronological context.
No Neanderthal fossil has yet been discovered at JKF-1 or Al-Marrat 3, so direct biological confirmation remains absent.
Nevertheless, the results support a model in which Neanderthal populations expanded beyond the Levant and reached northern Arabia during the early part of Marine Isotope Stage 3. Such movements may have been aided by temporary wetter phases that made normally arid landscapes more habitable.
The findings therefore place Arabia more firmly within the demographic history of Late Pleistocene Southwest Asia, suggesting that the peninsula was not only a corridor for Homo sapiens dispersing from Africa, but may also have formed part of the southern range of Neanderthal expansion.
Published on: 26-08-2026
Edited by: Abdulmnam Samakie
Source: Quaternary Science Reviews
