10/ Huge team effort: Rose, Garba, Arnold, Beshkani, Bicho, Černý, Chlachula, Dellmour, Hallinan, Kamenik, Al Mahri, Al Mahrooqi, Meredith-Williams, Samawi, Usyk & the late Anthony Marks ✝ who contributed extensively before his passing.
All data & code: osf.io/jt7ke/
9/ This adds to growing evidence that pre-70 ka expansions out of Africa were climate-dependent & demographically fragile. Green corridors opened, people moved, corridors closed, populations died. The successful global colonization came later — and understanding WHY is the next challenge.
8/ Timing overlaps with estimated H. sapiens → Neanderthal gene flow (~120–100 ka). The Dhofar population was too far south to meet Neanderthals, but contemporaneous Nubian groups in the Levant were right in the contact zone. Two branches of the same expansion — both failed.
7/ The population vanished. The later Mudayyan industry in Dhofar shows minimal technological continuity — completely different core reduction, miniaturized technology, bidirectional flaking. No intermediate assemblages among 250+ surveyed sites. Demographic replacement, not evolution.
6/ Then the climate collapsed. At ~95 ka, dust flux spikes in the Gulf of Aden, speleothems stop growing, palaeolakes dry up. The Nejd became isolated — Rub' al Khali to the north, 300 km of waterless plain to the east. No escape route.
5/ This is contemporaneous with Nubian assemblages in the Negev (Dimona South, Ein Ziq: 116–82 ka) and late Nubian Complex sites in NE Africa. Same reduction strategy, same absence of other Levallois variants. This wasn't convergence — it was dispersal.
4/ Result: all Dhofar Nubian occupations cluster tightly between 109–95 ka (Bayesian modelled). That's MIS 5c — a brief humid window when southern Arabia was grassland, not desert. Phytolith data from our sites confirm this directly.
3/ Nubian Levallois technology — a distinctive African stone tool tradition originating in the Nile Valley — appears across 250+ sites on the Nejd plateau of Dhofar. We excavated 3 new stratified sites and dated them with single-grain quartz OSL.
2/ Everyone alive outside Africa descends from a dispersal ~50–70 ka. But fossil & archaeological evidence shows earlier waves left Africa too. What happened to them? We investigated one such expansion using new excavations in Dhofar, Oman.
1/ 🧵 NEW PREPRINT: "A failed human expansion out of Africa 100,000 years ago"
We present the first comprehensive chronology for Nubian Levallois technology in southern Arabia — and it tells a story of expansion, isolation, and extinction.
🔗 doi.org/10.21203/rs....
@arduq.bsky.social @icarehb.bsky.social
What happened to humans who left Africa 100,000 years ago? Here, we bridge genetics and stone tools — Nubian Levallois from Oman dated 109–95 ka, synchronous with gene flow into Neanderthals. Novel stratified evidence.
🔗 doi.org/10.21203/rs....
#Oman #MSA
New paper is OUT!
We trace how Dhofar’s MSA shifts from Nubian Levallois cores to the miniaturized Mudayyan industry—highlighting changing technologies along the southern dispersal route out of Africa. @arduq.bsky.social @icarehb.bsky.social
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
#MSA #levallois #ICHAJ_25
In Athens on 23rd of September, we’re organising a workshop on the Paleolithic in Jordan at ICHAJ — discussing present and future research in the region. I’ll be presenting on Nubian Levallois in Jordan, with AI helping me create illustrations. @icarehb.bsky.social
#Lithics #Refitting #Knapping
Excited to present my initial PhD results from Mozambique at SAFA 2025! If you're around, join us this week in Faro, Portugal @icarehb.bsky.social
#Nubian #Levallois #MSA
If you haven’t read our article on the spatial distribution of Nubian Levallois cores @eshallinan.bsky.social , check out our recent poster from the Hugo Obermaier Society 2025 conference, hosted by @icarehb.bsky.social in Portugal:
osamawi.github.io/Nubian-Leval...
#Lithic #LSA #MSA
Refitted sequence of blades and bladelets from our newly discovered site in central Mozambique. Stay tuned for 3D scans of our reffits @icarehb.bsky.social
Hot off the press! A bioarchaeological study of medieval burials from northern Tunisia.
Refitted sequence from our newly discovered site, Chessungalane in Mozambique: Early removals caused the pebble to fracture in half due to natural flaws. Knappers then took advantage of the flat fracture to produce bladelets from the narrow surface @icarehb.bsky.social
Levallois Alert ⚠️
Moving beyond classic metric measurements, @eshallinan.bsky.social and @jmcascalheira.bsky.social applied a geometric morphometric approach to Nubian Levallois cores, offering novel insights into shape variability at an inter-regional scale.
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
🚨 New paper alert! 🚨
Led by Joana Belmiro, our study on lithic raw materials at Vale Boi reveals that a significant share of chert came from non-local sources, including central Portugal & Andalucía, using macroscopic & petrographic analyses. @icarehb.bsky.social
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
#Bladelet #Lithic #MSA #LSA
Another refit from our new site, Chessungalane, in Central Mozambique @icarehb.bsky.social. An overshot ridge bladelet from a unidirectional bladelet core on blue jasper.
Fantastic talk by @eshallinan.bsky.social on Day 1 of the HEIRS Symposium at @icarehb.bsky.social. She explored the history & multiregional nature of Nubian Levallois cores from her 1st open-access NLC dataset. sapientia.ualg.pt/entities/pub....
Stay tuned for more NLC studies SOON!
#Archaeology #Outreach #Jordan
I learned about archaeology and stone tools at the hands of this incredible woman Prof Maysoon Alnahar.
www.usnews.com/education/ar...
#Lithic #MSA #LSA
The first refit of 2025 highlights the maintenance strategies of the knappers.
Stay tuned for more updates on Mozambique's Stone Age assemblages! @icarehb.bsky.social
#Knapping #Bifacial
A small bifacial tool, hafted in coffee wood.
Excited to share our latest paper on the Jordan Valley! It summarizes the project's field campaigns from 2015 to our most recent in 2023, highlighting key findings and insights into Paleolithic occupation in the region.
@icarehb.bsky.social @unibas.ch
www.researchgate.net/publication/...
#lithic #Knapping
Practicing thinning using antler @icarehb.bsky.social
Bifacial point
#Knapping #Lithic #Biface
Kicking off my first post on Bluesky with a bifacial flake point made from local Lisbona material.
