As late as the 1980s it is reputed that prominent Saudi clerics were making the case for geocentrism. Of course presumably most Saudis are not geocentrists, but their religious establishment is so calcified that medieval science still retains some hold upon their imaginations. That’s why I’m very, very, curious about the possibility which is emerging that a critical period of human evolution occurred in the Arabian peninsula. Maju points me to a paper in Quaternary Science Reviews which reports on the discovery of a site in north-central Saudi Arabia, the heartland of the House of Saud, which suggests human occupation ~75,000 years B.P. Middle Paleolithic occupation on a Marine Isotope Stage 5 lakeshore in the Nefud Desert, Saudi Arabia:
Major hydrological variations associated with glacial and interglacial climates in North Africa and the Levant have been related to Middle Paleolithic occupations and dispersals, but suitable archaeological sites to explore such relationships are rare on the Arabian Peninsula. Here we report the discovery of Middle Paleolithic assemblages in the Nefud Desert of northern Arabia associated with stratified deposits dated to 75,000 years ago. The site is located in close proximity to a substantial relict lake and indicates that Middle …