ARABIAN PETROGLYPHS AS SIGNPOSTS TO WATER:

 

Large camel petroglyph. Internet image, public domain.

I have previously written a column about large camel petroglyphs in Arabia. On 10 March 2018 I wrote a column titled “Ancient Saudi Guest Artists-In-Residence” about these. Now, a new study (Guagnin et al. 2025)  published by Nature Communications online suggests that many  of these, as well as images of a number of other creatures, date back over 10,000 years, and may be indicators for the presence of water.

 

Heavily eroded large camel carved in the round. Internet image, public domain.

“Dated archaeological sites are absent in northern Arabia between the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and 10,000 years ago (ka), signifying potential population abandonment prior to the onset of the Holocene humid period. Here we present evidence that playas became established in the Nefud desert of northern Arabia between ~16 and ~13 ka, the earliest reported presence of surface water following the hyper-aridity of the LGM. These fresh water sources facilitated human expansions into arid landscapes as shown by new excavations of stratified archaeological sites dating to between 12.8 and 11.4 ka. During the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, human populations exploited a network of seasonal water bodies - marking locations and access routes with monumental rock engravings of camels, ibex, wild equids, gazelles, and a urochs. These communities made distinctive stone tool types showing ongoing connections to the late Epipaleolithic and Pre-Pottery Neolithic populations of the Levant.” (Guagnin et al. 2025:1) The recording of these animals (other than camels) considerably enlarges our data pool for this area.

Palimpsest of animals (camel, donkey, oryx) outlined. Image from M. Guagnin et al., Nature Communications, 2025. 

I have also written a number of columns about rock art in Saudi Arabia which can be found by clicking on Saudi Arabia in the cloud index at the very bottom of the blog. “Rock art has been found in Saudi Arabia before, but those petroglyphs date from the Neolithic period around 8,000 years ago. The engravings found at Jebel Misma, Jebel Arnaan and Jebel Mleiha – all rock outcrops in a remote part of the Nefud, near its southern edge – are much older. The engravings can be seen for miles and were probably intended to mark territory or indicate nearby sources of water, says Petraglia, the director of the Aurstalian Research Center for Human Evolution at Griffith University in Brisbane.” (Metcalf 2025) So, the new rock art written about is almost 50% older than most previous sites.

Tracings of the four camel engravings with greatest similarity (after Figure 4). The two camels on the right have been mirrored for better comparison (© G. Charloux and M. Guagnin, Figure 5, page 1306. 

In order to learn more about the people and culture involved the team literally dug in to the subject. They conducted excavations under the art. “Looking for buried clues that might shed light on the new engravings, Guagnin and her colleagues dug trenches in sand beneath the art. The excavations uncovered over a dozen animal bones and thousands of artifacts, including hearths, stone beads and tools, and shells from various animals. One palm-sized stone with clear battering marks matches pecking tools discovered at petroglyphs sites in Europe and South America, indicating it was likely used to peck some of the nearby engravings. Radiocarbon dating of an ostrich egg, oyster shell, and charcoal from one of the hearths, in conjunction with measurements of how long it had been since the sediments around the buried artifacts were last exposed to sunlight, revealed the art and artifacts were between 12,800 and 11,40years old.” (Brown 2025) Finding significance in a hammerstone that supposedly matches sites in Europe and South America is silly. So, it doesn’t match hammerstones from North America, or Asia, or Africa? Of course it does, a hammerstone is a hammerstone. This statement is the result of the obsessive need to cite every statement in such a paper, the researchers found papers about hammerstones from Europe and South America.

Three large camels and one very small antelope (in lower left). Image from arkeonews.net.

Their surveys and research hve contributed a great deal of new knowledge of rock art of Saudi Arabia. “Surveys identified previously unknown rock art landscapes with life-sized depictions of wild mammals and human figures. Across the three areas 62 rock art panels were recorded, containing 176 engravings. Of these, 130 were life-sized and naturalistic engravings depicting camels (90), ibex (17), equids (15), gazelles (7), and aurochs (1), with individual representations frequently measuring up to 2.5–3.0m in length and 1.8–2.2m in height. In addition, we identified 2 camel footprints, 15 smaller scale naturalistic depictions of camels, 19 human figures, 4 human faces or masks, and 6 unidentified, partial engravings. Most of the recorded engravings show camels in a detailed and naturalistic style that echoes the reliefs of the Camel Site to the north of the Nefud desert. This includes the frequent depiction of a bulging neckline, indicating they represent male camels in rut.” (Guagnin et al. 2025:3) Such remarkable attention to detail indicates the importance of the imagery to its creators.

Large camel. Image from cambridge.org.

The researchers also tackled the difficult task of working out the stratigraphy of palimpsest panels that had experienced multiple occasions of petroglyphs creation. “The depictions span multiple engraving phases, with images often overlapping on rock surfaces. Sometimes this was done to update an existing representation or to depict a different animal species. We distinguish four phases here. Two early rock art phases: small, stylised depictions of women (phase 1, traced in green), followed by large human figures in frontal view (phase 2, traced in yellow). These human figures were always noted to be older than, i.e. underneath, the recorded life-sized animal representations, and they make up a much smaller proportion of motifs. The third phase shows detailed, extremely naturalistic representations of animals, where each depiction has individual characteristics (traced in white). A later, fourth phase (traced in blue) shows more stylised depictions of animals with cartoonish features, including rounded eyes and horn ridges, and more standardised, near-identical depictions of animals.” (Guagnin et al. 2025:3)

 

Large camel carving. Internet image, public domain.

If these animal images point to sites where water is available the sheer variety somewhat mystifies me. If I had produced an image of a camel as a marker to fresh water wouldn’t I use the same image to mark the next fresh water source as well? And, if there is already a picture marking the site why did I need to add another picture to mark it again. While some of these may incidentally mark water sources my guess is that they are found near where water was available because the people were found near where water was available, the propinquity may be a coincidence. Yes, they mark sites near water, but no, they are not purposeful signs pointing to a water source.

NOTE: Some images in this column were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Brown, Taylor Mitchell, 2025, Prehistoric camel art pointed to precious water sources in the Arabian Desert, 30 September 2025, Science (online), American Association for the Advancement of Science. doi:10.1126/science.zzwcsrv. Accessed online 1 October 2025.

Charloux, Gillaume, Maria Guagnin, Michael Petraglia, and Abdullah al Sharekh, 2022, Project Gallery Arock art tradition of life-sized, naturalistic engravings of camels in Northern Arabia: new insights on the mobility of Neolithic populations in the Nafud Desert, Antiquity 2022 Vol. 96 (389): 1301–1309 https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2022.95 , Accessed online 12 October 2025.

Faris, Peter, 2018,Ancient Saudi Guest Artists-In-Residence, RockArtBlog, 10 March 2018. www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/7760124847746733855/8288369396956779505.

Metcalf, Tom, 2025, 12,000-year-old rock art hints at the Arabian Desert’s lush past, Science News (online), https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-rock-art-arabian-desert-wet. Accessed online 5 October 2025.

WATER GLYPHS:

In 2004 William D. Hyder wrote “How people interact with the environment is, in part, a projection of their culture. Patterns in the location of human activities can be interpreted as evidence of cultural behaviors and beliefs (p. 85-86).” He goes on to discuss rock art locations as interpretable phenomenon. He does, however, point out the danger in using our modern framework of beliefs and perceptions to analyze locations that were originally established by people whose framework of beliefs and perceptions was very different.

I have written elsewhere about the pitfalls of making such assumptions because of that very difference. Take, for example, a rock art panel that is found on the general border to one group’s territory. I know many people who will automatically assume that it was placed there as some sort of warning message to outsiders about trespassing on that group’s territory. Just as plausible, however, is the possibility that it was placed there to be as far as possible from the center of habitation of the resident group because it is too holy to be located where it would be exposed to the profane eyes of the group. Almost opposite interpretations, but both are equally plausible, or implausible, the main difference being an inward or outward focus in interpretation. Was it placed there because of us, or them? We just really need to know a lot more about the people and their territory to make that kind of analysis.

This attitude is in line with the thoughts of Lewis Binford who, according to Wikipedia “is mainly known for his contributions to archaeological theory and his promotion of ethnoarchaeological research. As a leading advocate of the "New Archaeology" movement of the 1960s, he proposed a number of ideas that matured into Processualism.” Binford studied the uses that people put various locales in their territory to by analysis of cultural remains, tools, etc., and would then have made assumptions related to possible meaning (had he felt that he had enough information to do so) based upon factual information related to activities in that location.

"Water glyph." 

http://www.wildernessutah.com/learn/waterglyphs.html.

One commonly assumed relationship between rock art and geography is the marking of resources, perhaps most often presented as “water glyphs” which announce to onlookers the presence of potable water. In an arid landscape like much of the American west this is a particularly prevalent belief. I am personally dubious about this and for the same reasons that I outlined in my first posting in this blog on April 18, 2009, ARE THERE MAPS IN NATIVE AMERICAN ROCK ART?  I argued then, that since Native American cultures depended primarily on oral transmission of knowledge the idea that they put up a sign to mark something seems a little unlikely. Add to that the fact that you and I know where all of the resources are in our territory and anyone else is a potential enemy who we would not want to see the signs and you have sufficient reason for me to doubt the reality of those “water glyphs”.

Indeed, these so-called water glyphs resemble the arrangements of lines engraved into rocks in South Carolina that were used for pine tar extraction and leaching lye from wood ashes and that I posted (http://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/South%20Carolina) and that I posted on 14 April 2013. Not that there is any indication of pine tar extraction in the Arizona desert, but this suggests that there are other possible explanations.

Jane Young related one anecdote that might also shed some light on this. “I remember showing slides to one tribal elder and asking him what he thought about the projected figures. He replied, “I don’t know, I’ve never been there.” His later comments revealed his strong feeling that he couldn’t say much about imagery that he had not seen in its overall natural context. This suggests that rock art images in and of themselves are only part of what is significant about a site; nearby images are also important, as are local plants, animals, boulder configurations, springs, and so on. Rock carvings and paintings are, after all, integral parts of the landscape surrounding the pueblo, and like other features of that landscape, Zunis frequently associated them with events from myth and legend that transpired there.” (Young 2004:83). It seems to me that this also argues against blanket assumptions that any specific symbol can always be interpreted as having the same meaning, no matter where it is located. If it is located at a water source, then perhaps it is a water glyph, but if not, I will not accept that as an explanation. And even if it is in reference to water at that water source, that does not mean it is a sign pointing to that water. Perhaps that symbol is meaningful to the spirit of the water in that location.

As I have said before, I am always very skeptical when presented with claims about rock art being some sort of sign or marker to a resource. Do I know what these “water glyphs” represent – no, I do not, but I am skeptical that they are meant to lead us to water. What do you think?

REFERENCES:

http://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/South%20Carolina

Hyder, William D.

2004    Locational Analysis in Rock Art Studies, p. 85-101, in The Figured Landscapes of Rock Art, edited by Christopher Chippindale and George Nash, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Young, M. Jane

2004    Ethnographic Analogies in Southwestern Rock Art, p. 80-102, in New Dimensions in Rock Art Studies, edited by Ray t. Matheny, Occasional Papers Series No. 9, Museum of Peoples and Cultures, Brigham Young University, Provo.