The Gobi desert is a vast area of 1,295,000 square kilometres, spread across northern China and Mongolia. It is an inhospitable, barren area, home only to hardy nomadic tribes who can withstand the harsh extremes of -43° C to +38° C. However, 40,000 years ago it painted a totally different picture, home to a wide variety of flora and fauna, interspersed with large lakes, which have long ago dried up under desertification. This period coincide with the Pleistocene and early Holocene occupation of the region.
     A team of archaeologists from the Institute of Archaeology, University of Wroclaw (Poland), has been conduction research across the southern end of the Gobi with amazing results. Not only have they found large, stone covered Iron Age tombs but also a variety of stone tools and a group of several items made of jasper, on what would have been a lookout point on one of the mountains.
     Professor Szykulski, leader of the project, is quoted as saying "The accumulation of certainly valuable material in one place proves that it had great importance for the inhabitants of the region. Perhaps the discovery is related to a rite".
     The aim of the project is to chart pre-history for this semi-arid area, between the Altai Mountains and the Gobi desert. Restricting the area to this region reduces the area to be covered but even so it stretches to a vast 50,000 square kilometres.

Edited from Science & Scholarship in Poland (10 June 2016)