quote:In the year 2000 the Egyptian naturalist Gabriel Mikhail was led by local Bedouin to a large shelter containing a number of petroglyphs. The few taken photos showed some remarkable animals engraved in what appeared to be raised relief, in a style totally different from the known petroglyphs of the Eastern and Western Deserts of Egypt. In January 2001 the author was privileged to have been offered the opportunity to visit the site, and to take more detailed photographs of the panels. At the time it was assumed that the site must have been recorded previously. However a review of the rather sketchy literature of the region seems to indicate that the shelter was never published, it remained unknown even to specialists dealing with the prehistory of the Sinai Peninsula.
The paper describes the engravings as very different in style from those in Egypt's western and eastern desert and interprets the artists as hunter-gatherers who roamed the area between the southern Levant and the Arabian peninsula. Their depictions of female figures often show prominent buttocks, which goes to show that not everything about human nature changes over thousands of years.
Might these represent cousins of the Natufian peoples?
Djehuti Member # 6698
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^ It's possible if not probable.
Natufian female and male figurines
It's funny that the experts tie the artwork to that in Arabia since the Kebaran Culture which preceded the Natufian is associated with both the Levant and Arabia. I cited a book many years ago about Kebaran rock art from the Levant all through Arabia.
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^ Thanks Archaeopteryx. If the article is correct that the Sinai petroglyphs date back to the Late Pleistocene then it is probably associated with the Kebaran Culture (c.23,000 to 15,000 BP) which is predecessor to the Natufian Culture.
I think the last time we discussed ancient cultures of Sinai was here.
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