Tethered to stone: how rock and water availability shaped early desert occupation

Cancellieri, Emanuele

doi:10.1038/d41586-026-03263-0

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28 October 2026

Tethered to stone: how rock and water availability shaped early desert occupation

Fresh water in deserts often points to sites with signs of early humans and stone tools. But, in Arabia’s Rub’ al Khali region, water alone does not predict occupation.

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Emanuele Cancellieri ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0975-5675⁰

Emanuele Cancellieri
1. Emanuele Cancellieri is at the Interdisciplinary Center for Archaeology and the Evolution of Human Behaviour (ICArEHB), Universidade do Algarve, 8005-139 Faro, Portugal.
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Climate and freshwater availability strongly shape expectations about past human dispersal and occupation across regions that are now deserts. Writing in Nature, Dellmour et al.¹ examine this idea by studying the Rub’ al Khali (which translates to the Empty Quarter), an almost uninhabited sand desert in the southern Arabian Peninsula.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-03263-0

References

Dellmour, R. W. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11180-5 (2026).
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Article Google Scholar
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The author declares no competing interests.

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[1] Dellmour, R. W. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11180-5 (2026).
Article Google Scholar

[2] Matter, A. et al. Quat. Int. 382, 120–131 (2015).
Article Google Scholar

[3] Rose, J. I. et al. PLoS ONE 6, e28239 (2011).
Article PubMed Google Scholar

[4] Groucutt, H. S. et al. Quat. Sci. Rev. 119, 116–135 (2015).
Article Google Scholar

[5] Hallinan, E. & Shaw, M. PLoS ONE 15, e0241068 (2020).
Article PubMed Google Scholar

[6] Nash, D. J. et al. J. Hum. Evol. 96, 113–133 (2016).
Article PubMed Google Scholar

[7] Foley, R. A. & Lahr, M. M. PLoS ONE 10, e0116482 (2015).
Article PubMed Google Scholar

[8] Rose, J. I. et al. J. Paleolit. Archaeol. 8, 40 (2025).
Article Google Scholar

[9] Scerri, E. M. L. et al. Sci. Rep. 8, 17165 (2018).
Article PubMed Google Scholar

[10] Groucutt, H. S. et al. Nature 597, 376–380 (2021).
Article PubMed Google Scholar

[11] Roberts, P. & Stewart, B. A. Nature Hum. Behav. 2, 542–550 (2018).
Article PubMed Google Scholar

Tethered to stone: how rock and water availability shaped early desert occupation

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