Mark Schroeder and I, having finished our latest recruitment trek of the Middle East, drove north of Jeddah to visit the UNESCO World Heritage site of Mada'in Saleh. We were knocking around the town of Al 'Ulá when we spied these petroglyphs on a cliff near our hotel. I'm guessing they are 2 to 3 thousand years old based on my experience in Botswana. The lettering is clearly not Arabic. I'm guessing Nabatean or Hyanese in origin. Interestingly the style of some of these carvings is quite similar to those I saw in Africa. Either humans developed these kinds of ideas at roughly the same time serendipitously or there was trading amongst them.
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