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Stone Age in Sinai

Stone Age finds such as flint tools are not rare in Sinai. But for the non expert they are difficult to classify as, according to Rothenberg, this period covers the almost inconceivable range of time from 700,000 to 4,500 years BC. This huge span is divided according certain criteria and characteristics of finds and find locations into several epochs, which still cover scarcely conceivable periods of time. Historically interpretable finds discovered at Gabal Maghara date from the early Paleozoic. Every time the climate became more humid as happened about 35,000 and 7000 years ago, settlements grew up at the foot of the mountains in the Tih desert. In dry periods, however, the area was deserted.
Significant connections between the inhabitants of Sinai and settlers on the Arabian Peninsula are discernable in the Neolithic Age. Rothenberg excavated wall tombs up to eighty meters long and 1.5 meters wide and Neolithic places of worship like those in eastern Arabia. Perhaps the most important result of these excavations was the recognition that even as far back as the Stone Age humans followed the water and the paths they still use through the desert today. The dangerous, waterless desert has been the center of the Tih Plateau ever since the beginning of human memory, and only on the slopes of the mountains have humans been able to settle from time to time. On the other hand, the edges of the Tih Fault, which abound in water, and the basement complex in the south, have always permitted human settlement. First, only watering-places, grazing land, and sites with flint attracted humans; later also turquoise and copper deposits. The history of settlement in Sinai was thus dictated by geological and geographical conditions right from the beginning.
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