SOUTHERN ARABIA, A PROBLEM FOR THE FUTURE? 
By CarLetron S. Coon 
Harvard University 
INTRODUCTION 
The one corner of the Asiatic continent with which archeologists, 
ethnologists, and physical anthropologists have concerned themselves 
the least, for excellent reasons, is southern Arabia. This pardonable 
neglect stands in inverse ratio to the region’s natural appeal and 
interest. The whole Arabian peninsula, from one standpoint, forms 
one of three vermiform appendices dangling from the main mass of 
Asia into the Indian Ocean. Arabia, southern India with Ceylon, 
and the Malay Peninsula, have all three served as culs-de-sac to old, 
discarded, and forgotten fragments of humanity, pressed out of circu- 
lation by the movements of more vigorous and more civilized groups 
to the north. The parallel between southern Arabia and the other 
two appendices is clear. The primitive Bedawin of the Hadhramaut, 
who form the substratum of that country’s population, and the non- 
Arabic-speaking natives of Mahra and Dhofar, serve as the western 
counterparts of the Vedda, the Semang, and the Sakai. 
But there is another facet to this comparison. Just as the brilliant 
Sinhalese civilization flourished in Ceylon, just as the Mon-Khmer 
civilization reached sculptural heights in the jungles of Cambodia 
and Siam, and Hindu culture was carried over into Sumatra and Java, 
so southern Arabia has at the same time played a second role, that of 
a hothouse of high oriental civilization in antiquity. Here flourished 
1The purpose of the author in writing this paper is to summarize the existing informa- 
tion, available to him, concerning the prehistory, archeology, and ethnology of the por- 
tions of Arabia lying south of the twentieth parallel, especially the kingdom of Yemen and 
the regions of Hadhramaut and Dhofar, and the island of Socatra, and to interpret that data 
both historically and ethnologically. In so doing the author has drawn heavily on several 
sources: Maj. H. St. John Philby’s articles in the New York Times of September 12 and 
19, 1937; Dr. Cesare Ansaldi’s book, “Il Yemen’; the sections written by Drs. Nielsen, 
Hommel, and Rhodokanakis in the ‘Handbuch der altarabischen Altertumskunde”’; Van 
den Berg’s “Le Hadhramout et les Colonies Arabes dans 1’Archipel Indien’; ‘Southern 
Arabia,” by Theodore and Mrs. Bent; and “Arabia Felix,” by Bertram Thomas. 
The bulk of the information comes from the aforementioned sources, most of the rest 
from the author’s field notes. The interpretation, unless otherwise acknowledged in the 
text, is original, 
Reprinted by permission from Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology 
and Ethnology, Harvard University, vol. 20, Dixon Memorial Volume, 1943. 
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