Life-size rock art points the way to oldest human inhabitants of Saudi Arabia — and the desert oases they used

Overlapping life-sized camel and small gazelle engravings on a rock face, outlined in white and different shades of blue. .

Archaeologists in Saudi Arabia have discovered 12,000-year-old life-sized animal etchings — "monumental rock art" that dates to over 2,000 years before humans were thought to be in the region, a new study finds.

These highly realistic depictions of camels and other creatures were likely culturally meaningful for these hunter-gatherers, and probably served as waymarkers to help people locate oases that popped up when the area became wetter starting from 16,000 to 13,000 years ago, the researchers wrote in the study, which was published Tuesday (Sept. 30) in the journal Nature Communications.