A local Yemenite stumbled upon the ancient remains of human bones and broken pottery in a tomb near his house in the Qrew area of Hadramout (Yemen). "The cave is located in the Qrew area about 15 km west of Sayoun," said Abdul Rahman Al-Saqqaf, head of the General Organization for Antiquities and Museums (GOAM) in Hadramout Hadramout. "It's a group of cave tombs that look like the same kind of tombs found in Ribon at the entry of Daw'an valley in Hadramout," he added. These recently found tombs appear to date back to thousands of centuries BCE.
     The cave contains about five tombs. Inside are human skeletal remains and broken pottery. The cave, which was located on fragile sandy rocks, had collapsed on the ancient finds. "In cooperation with villagers, we appointed a guard to protect the site," said Al-Saqqaf. The remains of human bones and broken pottery that were found in the caves have already been documented and preserved in Sayoun National Museum, according to Al-Saqqaf.
     "We noticed that some of the human bones found are burned in the same way as were the remains found by the Russian archaeological team in the eighties at the historic site of Ribon, 70 km from the Qrew area. Qrew is about 25 meters high from the valley bottom, which is very similar to Ribon," Al-Saqqaf noted. "I hope the General Organization for Antiquities and Museums will include this site in its coming agenda and do excavation and preservation," he concluded. The results of excavations in the historic city of Ribon found that the old settlement dates back to the first millennium BCE and that it was destroyed by a massive fire.

Source: Yemen Times (28 January 2009)