What if the Arabian Peninsula was not a mostly desert region?

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors "wouldn't have been able to exist in many areas of Arabia as it is today," says Parton. "At present the Indian Ocean Monsoon just clips the very southern edge of the peninsula," so the rest of Arabia is desert. read more

Arabia Deserta ("Desert Arabia"): signified the desert interior of the Arabian peninsula. As a name for the region, it remained popular into the 19th and 20th centuries, and was used in Charles M. Doughty's Travels in Arabia Deserta (1888). read more

Arabian Desert, great desert region of extreme southwestern Asia that occupies almost the entire Arabian Peninsula. It is the largest desert area on the continent—covering an area of about 900,000 square miles (2,300,000 square km)—and the second largest on Earth, surpassed in size only by the Sahara, in northern Africa. read more