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Seven footprints at Alathar, an ancient lake site in Saudi Arabia, were likely made by Homo sapiens about 115,000 years ago. They place people at the edge of a freshwater lake in the Arabian interior—but the prints are not preserved well enough to prove the species, or to reveal why the people were there.
What was discovered at Alathar?
Researchers found a field of impressions at the Alathar ancient lake deposit in northern Saudi Arabia. A 2020 National Geographic report counted 376 depressions across the surveyed patch; among them, researchers identified seven footprints as likely human tracks. The scene is dated to approximately 115,000 years ago.
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The impressions are not all human. They include tracks attributed to animals such as elephants and camels, with possible traces of giant buffalo and ancient horse relatives also reported. Together, they record people and wildlife at the same lake margin.
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The Arabian Peninsula is dry today, but its past included wetter periods with grasslands, rivers and lakes. Alathar was then a freshwater lake margin, not the arid landscape seen there now. Evidence from ancient algae indicates that the lake held fresh water.
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That setting helps explain why people and animals might have gathered there: a source of fresh water in a changing landscape would have been valuable. Researchers have suggested the tracks may have been made as the lake was drying. The human and animal impressions likely formed within hours or days of one another, though the evidence does not establish the exact interval between any two tracks.
How certain is the human identification?
The researchers judged seven impressions likely to be human by comparing their shape and size with ancient and modern footprints. They attributed them to Homo sapiens, an interpretation that fits the regional fossil context.
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That species identification remains plausible rather than certain. The prints are not sufficiently well preserved to establish who made them definitively. It is therefore more accurate to describe them as footprints likely made by Homo sapiens than as proven tracks of our species.
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The footprints are evidence that early humans reached the Arabian interior; they were not necessarily confined to routes through the Levant. But one set of tracks at one lake cannot map a migration. It does not establish the trackmakers’ route, their reason for visiting, how long they stayed, or what happened to them afterward.
The strongest conclusion is narrower: during a wetter phase, people were present at a freshwater lake in what is now Saudi Arabia, alongside animals that also came to the shore. The site adds a concrete glimpse of human activity to an incomplete account of movement through Arabia.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What can be read from the scene?
The impressions preserve a brief encounter with a landscape that has since changed. Researchers recognized a prominent animal impression, which helped them notice other tracks. As zooarchaeologist Matthew Stewart, the study’s first author, recalled: “As soon as we saw one, we could see them all.”
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Beyond that moment, the prints leave important questions open. They do not say whether the visitors were traveling through the region or making a shorter visit, and they cannot show the precise circumstances in which the tracks were made.
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