Stone Age man lived in Qatar, evidence suggests

By Arvind Nair
MAN used to live in Qatar as early as in the Stone Age, a senior official of Qatar Scientific Club asserted yesterday. Sheikh Salman bin Jabor al-Thani, head of the astronomical department at the club, said there was “strong evidence” to suggest this.
Besides, he has also found a number of pottery pieces and other evidence of civilisation as old as 2000 BC. People had lived in an area near the present day Dukhan.
There was also ample evidence to suggest that half of the Qatar peninsula, from the middle towards the south, was once under water.
He had found shark teeth, fish fossils and other remnants of underwater life in the middle of the desert.
Sheikh Salman also revealed that the club believed that a meteor had hit Qatar in the 1940s.
The club started a search for evidence three years ago because of stories of a “falling star” told by people of that era. There were also reports that a “foreigner working for QP” had discovered a piece of a meteorite near Dukhan in 1989. The man had since left the country, carrying the piece with him.
“We are trying to contact the person and bring the piece back to the country”.
The search took a long time to bear fruit because the area being investigated was marshy with soft sand, the official said.
They took the help of Google Earth to pinpoint the spots. They succeeded in locating five other small craters, which were just visible on the surface.
The biggest of the craters was some 100m wide while some of the smaller pieces found weighed 10kg. Altogether, the search party had recovered 89 pieces.
Evidence suggested that an object of high temperature impacted the earth at high speed, reckoned to be 80km to 90km per second. As it hit the ground, because of the temperature, water and salt evaporated, resulting in the sand rising.
Soil samples from the core areas had been sent to laboratories to check radiation and chemical structure, Sheikh Salman said.
All the craters had been in a straight line suggesting that they were indeed created by falling meteors.
“We believe there would be some big pieces lying in the sea”.
However, the club would not display any of the pieces until it was conclusively proved they came from meteors, said Sheikh Salman, whose calling card describes him as an “astronomical observer”.
The search would continue over an area of 30sq km, he said. The club might call for volunteers in the next few weeks.
A scientific aerial search to image the area had also been planned.