News Releases
Wrong Turn at a Date Palm Yields Fascinating Archaeological Find for ROM Archaeologist
A wind-swept road, a wrong turn at a date palm, and an inquisitive local farmer have led Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) archaeologist Ed Keall to the discovery of a bronze/stone-age civilization potentially dating as far back as 4000 BCE (Before the Common Era). This astonishing discovery -- on the western coast of Yemen, a country on the southern tip of the Saudi Arabian peninsula -- pre-dates the earliest known civilization in the region by 3500 years.
Keall, one of the world's leading experts on the medieval history of this area, recently found a cache of bronze tools and a hunk of obsidian (volcanic rock used by stone-age people to fashion tools) beneath an obelisk at a site he refers to as 'The Henge'. So nick-named because of its resemblance to Stone Henge in England, the site consists of five standing megaliths weighing more than 30 tons each and surrounded by smaller fallen obelisks.
Keall was led to this site by a local date palm farmer who offered to show him some 'interesting stones' after Keall lost his way in a sand storm and stopped to analyze some pottery sherds on the ground. "My limited Arabic led me to believe he was going to show me his rock collection or some deserted quarry nearby," says Keall. "You can imagine my surprise when his 'stones' turned out to be unreported evidence of a pre-Islamic civilization."
The source of these granite megaliths is either the Surat Mountain chain, at least 50 kilometres away, or one of the Red Sea islands. Figuring out how and why these stones were brought here is just one of the mysteries Keall is eager to begin solving when he returns to the site next fall.
He also hopes to learn more about a monumental building his team unearthed nearby, just days before returning to Canada. So far, Keall can only speculate that it was built sometime after 'The Henge' since some of the same obelisks have been found to form part of its foundation. The purpose of the obelisks also remains a mystery since skeletons have been found at the base of many but not all of the ones excavated to date.
"This is a very exciting site and I think it may yield some interesting information about humanity's transition from the stone age to the bronze age in this area," says Keall, "Right know we certainly have many more questions than answers but it does appear that there are at least two phases involved in this site. I am confident though, that further studies will help us discover more about the amount of overlap there was between these civilizations as well as answer the critical question of just what culture these remarkable monuments represent."
This research was funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Issue date:
April 1, 1998
For more information:
Media Relations
Tel.: 416.586.5547
Fax: 416.586.8022
E-mail: media@rom.on.ca
 |
News |
More information on RSS Feeds and subscribing
Media release information is accurate at the issue date noted.
For older news releases, particular details (including dates) may have changed in the intervening period.
