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Socotra Arabic: سُقُطْرَى‎ Suquṭra Somali: Suqadara, also called Soqotra, located between the Guardafui Channel and the Arabian Sea, is the largest of four islands of the Socotra archipelago. The territory is located near major shipping routes and is officially part of Yemen, and had long been a subdivision of the Aden Governorate. In 2004, it became attached to the Hadhramaut Governorate, which is much closer to the island than Aden (although the nearest governorate was the Al Mahrah Governorate). In 2013, the archipelago became its own governorate, the Socotra Governorate. There is a dispute between Yemen and Somalia's government over the island's sovereignty.[2]

The island of Socotra constitutes around 95% of the landmass of the Socotra archipelago. It lies some 240 kilometres (150 mi) east off the coast of Cape Guardafui and 380 kilometres (240 mi) south of the Arabian Peninsula.[3] The island is very isolated, home to a high number of endemic species; up to a third of its plant life is endemic. It has been described as "the most alien-looking place on Earth."[4] The island measures 132 kilometres (82 mi) in length and 49.7 kilometres (30.9 mi) in width.[5]

History
There was initially an Oldowan lithic culture in Socotra. Oldowan stone tools were found in the area around Hadibo by V.A. Zhukov, a member of the Russian Complex Expedition in 2008.[6][7][8]

Socotra appears as Dioskouridou ("of the Dioscuri"[9]) in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, a 1st-century AD Greek navigation aid. A recent discovery of texts in several languages, including a wooden tablet in Palmyrene dated to the 3rd century AD, indicate the diverse origins of those who used Socotra as a trading base in antiquity.[10]

In 2001 a group of Belgian speleologists of the Socotra Karst Project investigated a cave on the island Socotra. There, they came across a large number of inscriptions, drawings and archaeological objects.[11][12] Further investigation showed that these had been left by sailors who visited the island between the 1st century BC and the 6th century AD. Most of the texts are written in the Indian Brāhmī script, but there are also inscriptions in South Arabian, Ethiopic, Greek, Palmyrene and Bactrian scripts and languages. This corpus of nearly 250 texts and drawings thus constitutes one of the main sources for the investigation of Indian Ocean trade networks in that time period.

The islands passed under the control of the Mahra sultans in 1511, and its inhabitants were Islamized during their rule. In 1737, however, Captain de la Garde-Jazier, commander of a French naval expedition heading for Mocha, was surprised to find Christian tribes living in the interior of Socotra during a five-week stopover on the island. He reported in a letter home that the tribesmen, "due to lack of missionaries, had only retained a faint knowledge of Christianity."[18]

In 1834, the East India Company, in the expectation that the Mahra sultan of Qishn and Socotra, who resided at Qishn on the mainland, would accept an offer to sell the island, stationed a garrison on Socotra. Faced with the unexpected firm refusal of the sultan to sell, however, as well as the lack of good anchorages for a coaling station to be used by the new steamship line being put into service on the Suez-Bombay route, the British left in 1835. After the capture of Aden in 1839, the British lost all interest in acquiring Socotra.

Demographics

Most of the inhabitants are indigenous Soqotri people from Al-Mahrah tribe, who are of Southern Arabian descent from Al Mahrah Governorate,[1] and are said to be especially closely related with the Qara and Mahra groups of Southern Arabia.[50] There are also a small number of residents of Somali and Indian origin.[1] In addition, the island is inhabited by various Black African people, who are believed to be descendants of runaway slaves.[50]

Almost all inhabitants of Socotra, numbering about 60,000, live on the homonymous main island of the archipelago.[41] The principal city, Hadibu (with a population of 8,545 at the census of 2004); the second largest town, Qalansiyah (population 3,862); and Qād̨ub (population 929) are all located on the north coast of the island of Socotra.[51] Only about 450 people live on 'Abd-al-Kūrī and 100 on Samha; the island of Darsa and the islets of the archipelago are uninhabited.[52]

The Semitic language Soqotri, spoken originally only in Socotra by Al-Mahrah people, is related to such other Modern South Arabian languages on the Arabian mainland as Mehri, Harsusi, Bathari, Shehri, and Hobyot.

Genetics

The majority of male residents on Socotra are reported to be in the J* subclade of Y-DNA haplogroup J. Several of the female lineages on the island, notably those in mtDNA haplogroup N, are found nowhere else on Earth

**see other article in a separate post below "Out of Arabia" that talks about other haplogroups on the Island

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(translated from Russian)


Studies of the Stone Age of Socotra 2010
Studies on the Stone Age of the Russian Complex Expedition in the Republic of Yemen in the field season of 2010 at about. Socotra were focused on the continuation of the search for new monuments and the refinement of the geomorphological binding of the already recorded locations of the Olduvian culture. This second direction is associated with the participation in the expedition of the Honored Professor of the Department of Geomorphology and Paleogeography of the Geographical Faculty of the Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov, D.Sc. A.A. Lukashov. Joint reconnaissance routes covered significant areas, which allowed more definite talk about the time of settling the island by primitive people, most likely homo erectus.

One of the first reconnaissance routes was made to the area of ​​the village of Rakuf, where in the last field season a diverse collection of Stone Age products was collected.

Features of the Lower Paleolithic industry in the Rakuf area are associated with low quality flint. With a large number of fixed, chipped, flinty nodules and tiles, it is difficult to find typologically expressed products of the Stone Age.

With a non-uniform structure of flint - with interlayers and cracks-the ancient master was not easy to make the necessary tool or to remove the workpiece of a certain size and shape. In addition, when splitting flint, there is always a large percentage of by-products - small flakes, scales, debris and fragments. Nevertheless, when visiting Rakuf it was possible to replenish the collection of 2009 and to find several tools, which, without a doubt, can be attributed to the stone industry of the Aldovan culture.

Attention is drawn to the following findings:



Single-sided chopper on a high-form tile with a worked out working surface and covering it with fine retouching. The maximum width of the gun in the region of the working edge is 9.3 cm, the length along the axis of the gun is 9 cm, the maximum cross section is 5.8 cm. The heel and abdomen of the cannon are covered with a crust.

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The Archaeology of Seafaring in Ancient South Asia

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