Results of the project “Homo erectus on the path into Eurasia - stratified sites agglomeration of Acheulean tradition in the Arabian Desert in Sudan” financed by the Polish National Science Centre will be summarised in the presentation. The archaeological record in the EDAR area (Eastern Desert of the Atbara River), was multi-proxy studied in years 2016-2020, bringing important data for understanding the earliest prehistory of the Eastern Saharan Africa. Several Early Palaeolithic and Middle Stone Age sites have been discovered and investigated within a stratigraphical context. Their chronology was determined by a set of optically stimulated luminescence dating (OSL). The archaeological evidence from EDAR sites, including the oldest traces of hominin activity from Eastern Sahara, confirms the intensity of Palaeolithic human occupation of the desert when the Sahara was periodically habitable during Middle and Late Pleistocene humid periods. These traces are connected with two main activities conducted in the vicinity of sites: lithic tools production and butchering activity.

Acheulean – Middle Stone Age sequence from the Eastern Desert, Sudan – recapitulation of the EDAR project