Waiting another year to go back to the island is an emotional torture. We are finding ways to travel in a small team for a small period of time to the island.
We do send our cave maps and co-ordinates to the filming team on the island, hopefully they make a nice documentary and stay objective. We have to start searching for new funding.
Meanwhile we do receive some positive and promising news from Sana’a:
"Unique Antiquarian Discoveries in Socotra Island
SANA'A, Jan.20 (Saba) -The General Authority for Antiquities, Museums and Manuscripts has announced that Belgium mission discovered unique antiquities, in Socotra island ,south of Yemen, dating back to the third century. Chairman of the authority Dr Yusef Mohammad Abdullah said the mission had found out an antiquarian materials including earthen wares, incense pots and colour drawings belong to an old temple inside a 3 km-long cave on the northern coast of Socotra Island. In the bottom of the temple the mission had also discovered wooden boards with old inscriptions on them dating back to the pre-Islamic period, Dr.Yusef said. He added that one of the wooden boards contains inscriptions referring to the Tadmor kingdom in the third century. He said that among discoveries there are old Yemeni scriptures which would be accurately studied and tested with the objective of shedding the light over the history of Socotra Island before Islam. It's worth noting that Socotra Island is 345 km far from the coast of al-Mahra Governorate, east of Yemen. NS/NS/NM SABA 20/1/2002 14:10 GMT YEMEN NEWS AGENCY SABA"
So, our information hasn’t missed its purpose! Although “a temple” is probably due to a bad translation or misinterpretation.
