Image Details

Neolithic hoard. Stone tools, beads and painted pottery, found at al-Ubaid in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, date to between 5000–3500 B.C. The buff-greenish clayware shown here is decorated with hatches and lozenges. Flintstone and obsidian were used to make arrowheads and tools such as scrapers, blade tools, knives and spears. The people who fashioned these items lived in small huts or houses with interconnected stone walls and engaged in hunting, herding and primitive agriculture. Evidence from this period suggests that trade relations extended to the north as far as Mesopotamia and to the south to the Rub al-Khali desert.