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before 9th mill. BC
Most authorities now agree that there is, at present, no conclusive evidence of Paleolithic man having inhabited the peninsula of Qatar.
When the Arabian Gulf was dry, some 70,000 to 44,000 years ago, early man may have wandered what was then a marshy plain, but no signs of human occupation from this period survive.
| Related heritage sites |
| Sheikh Faisal bin Qassim Al-Thani Museum Qatar National Museum |
This late date for the occupation of the whole of eastern Arabia, including Qatar, has only recently been accepted.
The pioneering Danish archaeologists who were the first to work in Qatar in the 1950s and 1960s saw no reason to dispute the assumption by their predecessors in the Middle East that the Arabian peninsula had been inhabited for some 55,000 years. The Danish prehistorian Holger Kapel classified a large collection of stone tools into four groups, and 1967 he published the Atlas of the Stone-Age Cultures of Qatar. 'A Group', which he considered the earliest, included massive, primitive-looking hand-axes found on ancient shore-lines far removed from today's coast. The three other principal Stone Age industries which followed culminated in 'D Group', containing superbly-crafted tanged arrowheads.
It was not until the excavations in Qatar by the French mission from 1976 onwards that an entirely new set of dates was assigned to Qatar's pre-history. Excavations at Al Khor on the east coast proved that 'A Group' was not a Paleolithic industry. The site under investigation contained hearths, tools, shells and fish teeth and yielded carbon 14 dates of 5340-5080 and 5610-5285 BC. Nearby was an area covered in flint tools and flakes, representing three clearly-defined levels of occupation. 'A Group' and 'C Group' tools in the same layer, together with a fragment of Ubaid pottery from Mesopotamia, showed that the 'A Group' tool-making industry could not have been either Paleolithic or earlier than the other groups.
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