I HADN’T thought a scientific expedition would involve cockroaches or pirates, and certainly not both. And yet there we were, our team of four, sailing through a part of the Indian Ocean synonymous with Somali piracy, aboard a wooden cargo ship filled with a population of many thousands of grudging insects.
We shared our sweaty cabin with a crew of 12 Gujarati sailors. In between watching for other vessels and clambering among the bags of cement on deck, our three days at sea were punctuated only by visits to the ship’s “toilets”: two wooden boxes strapped to the outside of the hull. Glamorous it wasn’t, but none of us would have wished to be anywhere else.
We were on our way to the Socotra archipelago. Largely unknown in the wider world, this group of islands is a on account of its rich endemic flora and fauna. More than a third of its 800-plus plant species are unique to Socotra, whose westernmost island is just 100 kilometres from Somalia and the Horn of Africa. Some 400 kilometres to the north is Yemen, to which the territory belongs. With both countries torn apart by civil war, getting there isn’t easy. But that’s no reason not to try.
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Our team’s leader was archaeologist Ella Al-Shamahi of University College London. She was in search of secrets about our ancestors’ migration out of Africa that might lie in caves on the archipelago’s main island, also called Socotra. , and my job was to digitally map the major thoroughfares and tracks that cross the island.
The archipelago has been prized for its unique resources for at least two millennia, and it is said to have supplied much of the ancient world with frankincense and aloes used in perfumes and medicines. But the volume of scientific work done there is a mere fraction of what has been possible in the few comparable places on Earth. It had seemed like increased political stability in Yemen in the 1990s would improve things, but now the geopolitics of the region looks to be closing the door once more. Add in the increasingly extreme and frequent cyclones that hit its shores, and Socotra’s future as a refuge of natural and cultural heritage is far from assured.
Our scouting expedition, funded by the , departed from the UK and Sweden to the Gulf in March, continuing via a sea route that we are unable to fully disclose for security reasons. There is an airport on Socotra, but the few available flights either transit through the United Arab Emirates (UAE), requiring special permits that are almost impossible to come by, or pass through an area of Yemen rife with al-Qaeda activity.
One night in early April, the northern coastline of the main island of Socotra came into view. Moonlight illuminated huge, white sand dunes swept by fierce winds against limestone cliffs. It was the first time any of us had been there, but for Al-Shamahi it was a homecoming of sorts. She grew up in the UK, but her Yemeni parents regularly took her back to Yemen and their extended family. On those childhood holidays, she heard about the natural beauty of Socotra, the “Jewel of Arabia”, and also the story that people there still lived in caves.
When she became an archaeologist, that connection with the country of her ancestors led her to increasingly question the standard narrative of human migration out of Africa. “We were always told that humans left via the Sinai peninsula,” says Al-Shamahi. “But because my family were from Yemen, I knew that the , between Djibouti and Yemen, was really just a little gap. As far as I was concerned, crossing that wouldn’t have been that much of a feat for our ancestors.”
The thought spawned a project to search for palaeolithic fossils to work out which human species had made it to Yemen. But war broke out again on the mainland in 2015, and later a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE began widespread air strikes. This made it too dangerous for Al-Shamahi to return. Reluctant to stop working on Yemeni projects completely, however, her thoughts returned to the caves of Socotra.
“Caves are the original prime real estate,” she says. They are also a great environment for preserving fossils, which could answer the question: when did humans first get to Socotra?
Genetic data gathered from islanders suggests that a common ancestor arrived on the island about 6000 years ago, but it may have been much earlier. Al-Shamahi points to the work of local archaeologists in this regard, and the recent piecing together of the history of Socotra’s ancient inhabitants through rock art, carried out by anthropologist Julian Jansen Van Rensburg at the University of Exeter, UK, and independent geologist Peter de Geest.
On our arrival in Hadiboh, the windswept and searingly hot capital of Socotra, Al-Shamahi began by asking if the rumours from her youth were true: did anyone still live in caves? “Most people said no,” she says, “but a few strong voices said yes.” She pulled on this thread, and got a description of where they might be. Based on this, Ahmed Alarqbi, director of the Department of Antiquities on Socotra, helped us locate where in the islands’ interior this was likely to be.
After a 3-hour jeep ride deep into the mountains, we arrived at a community of families living in brick buildings attached to caves where their parents’ generation had lived. But in monsoon season – which was imminent – they would all retreat to the caves for shelter, just like their ancestors. “This was so interesting to me, because we’d arrived at a transition point,” says Al-Shamahi.
The other two members of our team were busy at work, too. , our photographer, was gathering material for 3D virtual reality models of some of the most important natural features on the island, including its iconic species, the dragon blood tree (Dracaena cinnabari, pictured above). Our film-maker, , shot the otherworldly landscape from dawn till dusk.
Al-Shamahi made initial explorations of promising cave sites, but time was against us. Each day, we waited for news from the port as to when the cargo ship that we arrived on would leave again. We had to be on it. Once the monsoon began, travel by sea would be impossible for another four months. After only a week on the island, we had to depart.
Next year, we plan to mount a bigger expedition: a month-long transect of the island by a large team of specialists. The cave houses we saw are, as yet, unexplored. On our return, Al-Shamahi will seek permission to dig test pits to investigate the sediment that forms their floors.
Yet the scouting mission was invaluable, and not just for her research. It gave our team first-hand experience of the bigger picture: the Jewel of Arabia is changing. In 2015, it was hit by two cyclones within a week. Their power and close timing was unprecedented, and up to 18,000 people – nearly a third of the island’s population – were displaced. Yemen’s ability to respond was severely hampered by the ongoing war. Although other Gulf states, in particular the UAE, contributed to the aid effort, Socotra was left with critical damage to infrastructure as well as to homes, fishing boats and the natural environment.
The aftermath of the 2015 cyclones also contributed to a new political storm. The UAE had provided much-needed assistance after the disaster, but its continued presence on Socotra in the aftermath led to accusations that it was seeking to increase its influence on the island, which is strategically positioned at the mouth of the Gulf of Aden.
In May this year, the UAE deployed more troops in response to a visit to the island by the Yemeni prime minister, and Saudi Arabia dispatched a delegation too. Although Socotra remains as yet unaffected by the conflict on the mainland, there are now military representatives from three Gulf states on this small island that lies far from the shores of the Arabian peninsula.
, killing 20 people and causing more mass destruction and displacement. Weather patterns here are also understudied, but climate change has been blamed for these extreme shifts.
When we return, our team will, in conjunction with people on the islands, look at how to build resilience to the effects of climate change, and how to bring the natural and scientific wonders of Socotra to the notice of the wider world. “This is adventure science,” says Al-Shamahi, “and Socotra lends itself to that. But it’s adventure science with a purpose.” With the threats now present on Socotra’s shores, that purpose is clearer than ever.
This article appeared in print under the headline “The secrets of socotra”
