09/03/2015

The MBI Al Jaber Foundation supports the Palaeodeserts Project

The MBI Al Jaber Foundation is pleased to have supported the excellent Palaeodeserts Project via a donation. The money was donated as a contribution to on-going research into Climate Change and Human Evolution in the Arabian Desert. Professor Michael Petraglia and his team continue to find evidence of early human populations, e.g. Homo Erectus, travelling widely across Arabia circa 400,000 years ago. They have also identified Homo Sapiens sites at Nefud as well as later Middle Palaeolithic sites together with tools, in stratified sites, next to lakes with drinkable water. The Palaeodeserts project covers a broad spectrum of academic subjects including geology, archaeology, palaeontology, rock art and environmental studies.

Michael Petraglia is Professor of Human Evolution and Prehistory, Senior Research Fellow and the Co-Director of the Centre for Asian Archaeology, Art & Culture, School of Archaeology, University of Oxford. He is also a Senior Research Fellow, Linacre College (Oxford), and a member of the Human Origins Program, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Professor Petraglia gave the first joint British Foundation for the Study of Arabia / MBI Al Jaber Foundation Lecture at the MBI Al Jaber Building, Corpus Christi College, Oxford in March 2014 and also contributed to the first MBI Al Jaber Lecture Series at the MBI Al Jaber Building, SOAS.

The lecture is available to watch on our YouTube channel

For further information, please contact:
Director of Public Relations
[email protected]