Archaeological, Linguistic and Historical Sources on Ancient Seafaring: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Study of Early Maritime Contact and Exchange in the Arabian Peninsula

Abstract

The Arabian subcontinent sits at a critical juncture in the Old World, surrounded to the west, north and east respectively by the African landmass, the Levant (with the European world beyond it), and the Asian continent. While its ancient and historical development has certainly been shaped by this positioning relative to the great continents, however, Arabia is equally defined by its near circumspection by the sea, which wraps itself around some 80% of its perimeter, and has served as both barrier and bridge to the surrounding regions since the emergence of modern humans out of Africa at ca. 80–60 ka (Petraglia and Alsharekh, 2003; Petraglia et al., 2007; Bailey, 2009). An increasing weight of evidence suggests that the three main bodies of water that surround Arabia – the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea – not only offered a rich resource base for thousands of years of human occupation in the subcontinent, but also witnessed some of the world’s earliest seafaring and maritime exchange activities. Evidence for maritime contact over long distances is for this arena also amongst the oldest in the world. At the same time, the sea has also sometimes served to distance Arabia from her neighbors, helping to shape a distinctive trajectory within the subcontinent.