ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the archaeological and environmental evidence from the Arabian Peninsula, southern Iran and Pakistan, and the Thar Desert of northwest India, which all lie within the Afro-Arabian Realm that also covers North Africa and the Sahara. As with the Sahara, the essential aspect of the colonisation of the Afro-Arabian Realm of Southwest Asia were the wet periods that created a “green Arabia” and a “green” Thar Desert. A finger bone of Homo sapiens shows that our species was in Arabia at ca. 85,000 years ago, but it was probably present by 200,000 years ago. The first human colonists of this region were using a Middle Palaeolithic technology, and may have overlapped with Neandertals in northern Arabia and southern Iran and Pakistan.
