Jabal Raat - Shuwaymis

Part of a UNESCO listed world heritage site rich in rock art, including figures of men, animals, palm trees and feet impressions, inscribed skilfully in life size shape. Some of these petroglyphs date to 14,000 years BP with life sized camel figures being from the Thamudic period 3000 years BP. At Jabal Raat six major clusters of rock art can be discerned. Although there is evidence on the lower slopes of Jabal Raat that some rocks with petroglyphs on them have been displaced since the petroglyphs were first made, this was undoubtedly a natural occurrence. Like Jubbah, the site has been in use over a prolonged period of time, certainly for most of the Holocene at least.  On one steeply sloping panel at Raat, about fifteen large cupules of 5–10 cm diameter occur. They appear to be the oldest surviving component of the site considered to be either of the final Pleistocene or the earliest Holocene. The surface of the panel has largely fallen victim to exfoliation since the cupules were made, and the original surface has best survived within the cupules. The same panel bears a series of archaic geometric motifs, such as circles, chronologically followed by hoof-prints, human footprints occurring in pairs and superimposed large motifs. Much of this panel is no longer accessible to work on because of a massive boulder gravity has placed above it. The flat underside of this boulder bears large petroglyphs that are also early, but a set of motifs on its present front face postdates the placement of the boulder.

Breeding Pied Avocet – Jubail area

Whilst birding the Jubail area in mid-June we saw two pairs of adult Pied Avocet Recurvirostra avosetta behaving as if they had young nearby. A quick look failed to locate the young birds and as we did not want to disturb them if they were breeding, we only stayed a few minutes. The next week the birds again were acting in a way to suggest they had young, but again we failed to see any. At then end of the month we located two separate young birds with the adults and managed to get a few photos. It is very unusual to see breeding Pied Avocet in Saudi Arabia and the species is mainly an uncommon migrant and winter visitor to all coasts that is locally common along the southern Red Sea coast and scarce inland. Very few birds have been proven to breed but in Riyadh in 1986 10 birds over-summered and two pairs nested in June and produced young. In 1987 a pair again bred but the nest was preyed upon by Brown-necked Ravens Corvus ruficollis. In the Eastern Province two pairs attempted to breed at Abqaiq 1976 & 1982 and three pairs in 1983 although it is generally a rather scarce visitor from August to March. Records have occurred throughout the year in the Jubail area but records in summer are much less common. A number of breeding pairs (possible as many as twelve) were found in 2020 at the same location as this year’s breeders.

Jabal Manjor - Shuwaymis

Part of a UNESCO listed world heritage site rich in rock art, including figures of men, animals, palm trees and feet impressions, inscribed skilfully in life size shape. Some of these petroglyphs date to 14,000 years BP with life sized camel figures being from the Thamudic period 3000 years BP. Jabals al-Manjor and Raat are rock escarpments of a now sand-covered wadi that is thought to have been a broad valley with flowing water during the early Holocene. Both Jabal al-Manjor and Raat contain a large number of human and animal figures, and other hills and outcrops within the buffer zone feature smaller concentrations. These sandstone exposures occur in a region that has seen numerous volcanic eruptions and lava flows in recent geological history. The large number of petroglyphs and inscriptions at these site complexes has been attributed to almost 10,000 years of human history. As the aquifer subsided, probably around mid-Holocene times, the formerly permanent human population became increasingly transient, but the sites were still visited in recent millennia as indicated by the rock art. The intensive and comprehensive survey of the Jabal al-Manjor and Raat complexes since their recent re-discovery resulted in the location of hundreds of rock art panels, several stone structures and typical stone objects of the Neolithic era 10,000 year BP. The Jabal al-Manjor corpus has been divided into twelve clusters comprising a total of 190 panels of petroglyphs. It additionally includes the sandy valley between the two mountains to emphasise the visual connections between the palaeolake that once existed there and the mountain slopes where the petroglyphs were made. The buffer zone includes the neighbouring mountain to the north where additional habitation sites might be discovered in future. This complex is the most spectacular of the sites of northern Saudi Arabia and more impressive than Jubbah in many ways. Its sites consist of slopes of jumbled, sub-angular boulders, mostly 5–10 metres in size, on which many thousands of petroglyphs occur. The profusely decorated panels on many of these huge boulders are no longer right way up, and as they changed their orientation every time the boulders moved down the slope, differently oriented figures were added. Some of them occur entirely upside-down, and many are truncated by subsequent fractures.

 

Juvenile Egyptian Nightjars – Jubail

Whilst birding the Jubail area in May we saw two juvenile Egyptian Nightjars. The plumage was very fresh with neat white fringed coverts forming neat lines across the wing with the birds staying around for at least a week. A few weeks later we found up to nine adult birds in wing moult. Breeding has long been suspected at this location and the fact that last year birds were proved to have bred in Qatif in KSA and juveniles were seen in Jubail with the young and adult remaining together suggests these birds are local rather than from elsewhere in the nearby region.

Jabal Umm Sinman Rock Petroglyhs – Jubbbah

In the southern part of Great Nafud Desert lies Jubbah, which was the centre of an advanced culture during the very beginnings of Arab civilization. Overlooking the freshwater lake that then existed was the hill range of Umm Sinman, providing shelter and water to both people and animals. Here the ancestors of present Arabs left the marks of their presence, their religions, social, cultural, intellectual and philosophical perspectives of their beliefs about life and death on the hills. The former freshwater lake of Jubbah was one of several such water bodies owing their existence to a series of sandstone inselbergs, occurring mostly in a north-south alignment. Lakes have in the geological past formed on the lee sides, the east, of some of these rock stacks dominating the landscape. The largest of these mountains is Jabal Umm Sinman, rising to a height of 1264 metres above sea level., or almost 450 metres above the surrounding desert. The palaeolake on its lee side was up to 20 km long and 5 km wide at its peak. During the region’s desertification, beginning in mid-Holocene times, the oasis of Jubbah provided the only substantial source of water within the desert, facilitating its continuing human occupation up to the present time and the gradual adaptation of the population to the significant environmental changes. These changes are distinctly expressed in the numerous petroglyph panels and rock inscriptions, the greatest concentrations of which occur in the lower rock exposures of the eastern flanks of Jabal Umm Sinman, a UNESCO world heritage site. Jabal Umm Sinman at Jubbah, situated in the Great Nafud Desert, has many exceptionally abundant and well-preserved petroglyphs on rocky outcrops in what is now a sandy desert, that display distinctively different rock art traditions over the last 10,000 years and reflect major economic and cultural changes, and the adjustments to climate change in a region. The oldest rock art tradition evident are early Neolithic petroglyphs including animals such as the ibex, which was revered by early Neolithic people who depicted the horns in exaggerated form. As cattle and horses were domesticated, they were brought to the region and images of them were added to the art. With increased desiccation and the drying up of lakes 3000 years ago, camels became essential to the economy of the ancestors of the Bedouin and are illustrated in abundance alongside Thamudic and Arabic script. Depictions of weapons of war suggest that this was a contested landscape. The petroglyphs were created by using a range of techniques with simple stone hammers, against a background of gradual environmental deterioration. This site is amongst the biggest and richest rock art complexes in the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East generally and can be compared with the world-famous rock art sites of Australia, France, India, Namibia, South Africa and the Saharan Desert. The largest and most prominent rock art panel at Jubbah contains three phases of rock art and inscriptions, representing Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Iron Age, recognized by differences in patina, type of animals and stylisation. The large size human figures with naturalistic body features and ambiguous faces are Neolithic, 10,000 years BP, as are the anthropomorphic representation of a human with long body and thin arms and ambiguous face, holding what appears to be a boomerang, while Thamudic inscriptions are 3000 years BP. At a different location but still on Jabal Umm Sinman can be found an amazing petroglyph of a horse pulling a cart showing domestication of horses occurred at least in the Bronze Age 3500 years BP as this is the date of the petroglyph. Close by is a Neolithic petroglyph of the deity of rain, lightning and thunderstorms showing rain falling on a couple of people and dated 10,000 year BP. The area is fenced for protection and you can only get access through the visitor centre at Jubbah, which is open daily from 08:00 – 15:00 hrs except Friday and Sunday when it is closed.