Parting the Red Sea: Late Pleistocene Lithic Variability and Human Dispersals in the Horn of Africa and Arabia

The last two decades have witnessed the discovery of numerous archaeological sites in the Horn of Africa (Djibouti/Eritrea/Ethiopia/Somalia) and Arabia ranging in age from OIS 5-3, ~125-29,000 ka. Many are stratified cave, shelter and open-air sites encompassing an impressive array of MSA-LSA/MP-UP flaked and groundstone artifacts, fauna, and more rarely fossilized remains of Homo sapiens. Against a backdrop of extreme fluctuations in paleoenvironments ranging from lofty glaciated peaks to scorching deserts, the sites reveal a high degree of spatio-temporal lithic technological diversity. Some sites on both sides of the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden show clear signs of lithic technological connections, while others in Arabia show more affinity with the Eurasian Middle Paleolithic than to any Arabian or African tradition. Sites in the Horn indicate considerable intra-regional variability, including possible western Ethiopian connections with Sudan. Explanations for this lithic diversity are many, but include genetic evidence for hominin dispersals through and across Africa into Arabia, and back again. This symposium brings archaeologists working in the Horn and Arabia together for the first time to discuss how these new data provide important new insights into the Late Pleistocene evolution and global dispersal of Homo sapiens and "modern human behaviour".