In ancient Arabia, people dined on sharks and stingrays

A 7,000-year-old tomb in what is now Oman indicates that the region’s Neolithic communities sometimes turned to unexpected trade to not only survive, but thrive in the harsh desert landscape. According to the findings published in the journal Antiquitythe inhabitants of southern Arabia hunted sharks and even stingrays.

Since 2020, researchers from the Archaeological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague (ARÚ) have studied Wadi Nafūn, an ancient funerary megalith (a structure built with large stones) used by Neolithic inhabitants during the 5th century BCE. During their excavations, researchers discovered the skeletal remains of more than 70 men, women and children. But it wasn’t just one generation of people. The size of the crypt and subsequent radiocarbon dating indicate that Wadi Nafūn was built and maintained communally for over 300 years.

“This monument was not built by just one small group. It represents cooperation, shared beliefs and the repeated return to a common ceremonial landscape,” project director Lžběta Danielisová said recently. Arkéonews.

However, Danielisová and her collaborators faced an immediate challenge. Biological materials such as teeth and skeletal fragments generally do not retain many organic components after being exposed to Oman’s arid climate for thousands of years. To fully understand their findings, the team needed to send the materials back to the Czech Republic. There, they used isotope analysis to examine a mineralized substance called bioapatite that remains on bones even after the collagen is gone.

They particularly focused on traces of carbon, oxygen and strontium to identify some of each Neolithic person’s dietary sources of protein. But it was the discovery of certain nitrogen isotopes that surprised them the most, because these compounds are only found in very specific marine animals.

“We know that these were not just ordinary proteins, but proteins from the top of the food chain,” Danielisová said in a university statement.

For hundreds of years, it appears that Neolithic communities in southern Arabia regularly hunted and consumed sharks. They didn’t just eat top predators. Throughout Wadi Nafūn, archaeologists have unearthed shark tooth pendants, additional tiger shark teeth, fishing tools and stingray beards. In order to harvest all these materials, Neolithic hunters would even have used their own teeth to help process and prepare their sockets.

“The teeth of this community have an interesting pattern. This indicates a specific diet and also that people used their teeth as tools,” explained Jiří Šneberger, anthropologist from ARÚ Prague.

Additional evidence from isotope analysis also showed that some of the people buried at Wadi Nafūn were technically not locals. Strontium and oxygen levels suggest that some adults buried here at least spent their childhood more than 30 miles inland. Overall, the sharks and human evidence illustrate a very dynamic, resourceful and collaborative region that used everything at its disposal to thrive.

“For the first time ever, we were able to use natural science data to document specialized hunting of marine predators, directly by analyzing the local buried community,” Danielisová said. “The connection between this burial community and sharks is very interesting and a new discovery not only in prehistoric Arabia, but in the area of ​​all dry zone Neolithic cultures.”

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