Water availability alone was not enough. Stone suitable for making tools was also essential for prehistoric desert settlement. This is the finding of a new study published in Nature, co-authored by Roman Garba of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Archaeology, Brno.
An international team of researchers from Czechia, Austria, Portugal, the USA and Oman has developed a general, freely available model that predicts which desert regions around the world could have supported permanent settlement by people dependent on stone tools. The study offers a new perspective on the conditions that shaped the human settlement of our planet.
The research team tested the model using, among other sources, data from the Czech archaeological expedition in Oman. Three institutes represent the Czech Academy of Sciences in the expedition: the Institute of Archaeology, Brno, the Institute of Archaeology, Prague, and the Nuclear Physics Institute.
For more information, see the press release.
Research article:
Dellmour, R. W. et al.: Stone and water governed early human settlement of the desert. Nature (2026).
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11180-5
