An update on the numbers / تحديث للأرقام

Dear reader, just to give you some extra info, below the English and Arabic abstract:

This volume presents an updated summary on the karst and caves of Socotra Island (Yemen). It is based on volume 20 of this series (de Geest 2006), which presented a total of 28 mapped caves yielding 22,707 m of underground passages. The publication in front of you now covers all expeditions made by the Belgian Socotra Karst Project SKP as well as more recent speleological expeditions of Czech cavers. 73 caves with a total of 38,538 m of underground passages were surveyed. In addition, 19 caves with 549 m of passages were sketched. Altogether this volume presents 92 caves (39,087 m of galleries). The Socotra Karst Project is a multidisciplinary speleological investigation: palaeoclimate, biospeleological, archaeological and sustainable development studies are being conducted by experts in close co-operation with several Yemeni and other international project partners. The longest cave explored so far is Giniba Cave at 13.5 km, while the deepest is Difshelei Cave (-282 m). Some of the caves provide significant freshwater resources. The scientific achievements with regard to speleothem dating are briefly explained, together with the biospeleological discoveries and the intriguing archaeological remains found underground.

يقدم هذ ا المجلد ملخصًا محدث ا عن الكارست والكهوف ف ي جزيرة سقطرى )اليمن(. وهو يستند إلى المجل د العشري ن من هذ ه

السلسلة )دي جيست 2006 (، الذي عرض 28 كهفًا جرى توثيقها، بإجمالي 22,707 مترًا من الممرات تحت الأرض، يغطي

هذا المنشور الذي بين يديك جميع الرحلات الاستكشافية التي نفذها مشروع كارست سقطرى البلجيكي ) SKP (، إضافة إل ى

رحلات كهفية أحدث قا م بها مستكشفو كهوف من جمهورية التشيك. وقد تم مس ح 73 كهفًا بإجمالي 38,538 مترًا م ن

الممرات تحت الأرض، كما جرى توثيق 19 كهفًا إضافيًا بإجمالي 549 مترًا من الممرات. وبذلك يعرض هذا المجلد ف ي

مجموعه 92 كهفًا، بطول إجمالي يبلغ 39,087 مترًا من الممرات، ويعد مشروع كارست سقطرى دراس ة كهفية متعددة

التخصصات، إذ يجر ي خبراء – بالتعاون الوثيق مع عدد من الشركاء اليمنيين والدوليين – أبحاثًا في مجالات المناخ القديم ،

وعلم الأحياء الكهفية، وعلم الآثار، والتنمية المستدامة، ويُعد كهف جنيبا أطول كهف تم استكشافه حتى الآن، إذ يبلغ طول ه

13.5 كيلومترًا، في حين يُعد كهف ديفشيلي أعمقها بعمق يصل إلى 282 مترًا تحت مستوى المدخل. كما توفر بعض الكهوف

موارد مهمة من المياه العذبة، ويستعرض هذا المجلد بإيجاز أبرز الإنجازات العلمية، بما في ذلك نتائج تأريخ التكوينات

الكهفية، والاكتشافات في علم الأحياء الكهفية، إضافة إلى البقايا الأثرية المهمة التي عُثر عليها ف ي باطن الكهوف.

Thanks again to: 

Jos Beyens, Michal Hejna (co-editors), Michael Laumanns (Publisher), Mohammed Al Kindi (Translation) all the expedition participants and of course the wonderful Soqotri people!

BHB, Volume 92 Peter De Geest, Michal Hejna & Jos Beyens (Eds.): Karst and Caves of Soqotra Island (Yemen) - interdisciplinary expeditions 2000 - 2025 = a fact!

Never give up, but here all gratitude to the perseverance of both Michal Hejna's team to keep on exploring the caves of Soqotra and Jos Beyens who mapped caves with a eagerness as if discovered yesterday. 

Also big thanks to Michael Laumanns, who kept pushing for an update!

The “Berliner Höhlenkundliche Berichte” (BHB), published by the Speleoclub Berlin, is the only comprehensive and continuously published series of caving expeditions and speleological country compilations. ISSN 1617-8572 

Volume 92 Peter De Geest, Michal Hejna & Jos Beyens (Eds.): Karst and Caves of Soqotra Island (Yemen) - interdisciplinary expeditions 2000 - 2025. 89 pages + fold-out surveys, many color photos; Berlin 2026. An update of volume 20 in this series, which featured 28 caves (22.7 km). This volume covers Belgian and Czech expeditions, which so far have yielded almost 39 km of passages from 90 caves - including Giniba Cave at 13.5 km and Difshelei at -282 m. With many cave maps and detailed chapters on biospeleology, archaeology and speleothem dating. In English with abstracts in French, Arabic, Czech and Dutch. Price: 15 EUR / 15 GBP (plus postage)

Links: https://www.speleo-berlin.de/en_publikationen.php / https://www.speleo-berlin.de/inc/abstracts.php?volume=92&lan=en

Inshallah, time to start writing another book about all the scientific discoveries linked to this body of work...

Soon available: De Geest, P.; Hejna, M. & Beyens, J. (Eds.) (2026): Karst and caves of Soqotra Island (Yemen) - interdisciplinary expeditions 2000-2025.

Soon summary and links will be provided here FIRST!

Meanwhile the references:

De Geest, P. (Ed.) (2006): Soqotra Karst Project (Yemen), 2000-2004. - Berliner höhlenkundliche Berichte, 20, 69 pp.; Berlin.

New volume (available later THIS MONTH!)

De Geest, P.; Hejna, M. & Beyens, J. (Eds.) (2026): Karst and caves of Soqotra Island (Yemen) - interdisciplinary expeditions 2000-2025. - Berliner höhlenkundliche Berichte, 92, 89 pp.; Berlin.

Sales price of the book will be 15 EUR (plus postage: 7 EUR in the Euro-zone, 9 EUR to the UK).

Last cave maps are being finalized, soon the overview of 25 years of cave and karst exploration will be ready!

 Last cave maps are being finalized! 

After 20 years, this feels like a huge relief... we keep you posted on the publication progress.

Thanks to all, especially Jos Beyens (see pictures) and Michael Laumanns

Mapping the Socotran caves again... after a small pause...

 After (a small pause of) 20 years, some of the cave maps are finally getting finished! All SKP-members have been active elsewhere, but thanks to Jos Beyens (final topo editor) and his discussions with Michael Laumanns (series editor of the Berliner Hohlenkundliche Berichte - BHB) all will be updated and published in 2026. As a reminder, our previous results can be found in Band 20 (2006).

Thanks to Jos Beyens, Rudi Debbaut, Karl Willems and all other SKP-members for these efforts and final wrap of exploration fun...

Meanwhile a Czech caving team is actively exploring on the island, with which we will start collaborating closely. Previous cave photographers are sharping their... images and the GPS-expert is uploading all exploration tracks.

In summary, all ingredients for a final book describing 20-30 years of exploration and research are piling up, the challenge in mine, Inshallah...

Peter   

The Decipherment of the Dhofari Script – Three halḥam abecedaries and the first glimpses into the corpus

Once in a while, here after a century of research, Prof. Dr. Ahmad Al-Jallad, a Jordanian-American philologist, epigraphist, and a historian of language might be on a break to decipher some enigmatic ancient South-Arabic scripts. 

Exciting stuff, as this ancient pre-Islamic language indigenous to South Arabia, also occurs on Socotra Island. While the experts are working on it right now, it might soon open the door towards a new fascinating chapter in the cultural history of Arabia.

Al-Jallad concluded the script most likely descended from a script called Thamudic B. That script was widely used on the northern side of the Arabian Peninsula, in what is today the Saudi Arabian province of Najd.

A nice summary can be found here: https://www.science.org/content/article/mysterious-pre-islamic-script-oman-finally-deciphered

The article itself is available here: https://www.academia.edu/129778573/Al_Jallad_2025_The_Decipherment_of_the_Dhofari_Script_Three_hal%E1%B8%A5am_abecedaries_and_the_first_glimpses_into_the_corpus

Picture website IASA

Thanks!

Caves, the next frontier...

 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-024-02302-y

After years of exploring cave systems and tafoni's on the island, we discovered quite some burial sites on the island. Questions popped-up: Who were these people? How old are the remains? Are these families/tribes? Where do the Soqotri people came from anyway? 

Finally some information got extracted from these remains, freshly published in Nature Ecology & Evolution, titled: 

Medieval DNA from Soqotra points to Eurasian origins of an isolated population at the crossroads of Africa and Arabia

Holocene vertebrate assemblages provide the first evidence for the presence of the barn owl (Tytonidae, Tyto alba) on Socotra Island (Yemen)

Another cave-derived result shows the presence of the barn owl (Tyto albo) once flying around on the island! The article in Geobios clarifies Hope carbon dating can shed more light on the exact period?

Lot's of caves, lot's of faunal remains, lot's of work...

Congrats to the Italian team!

 

__PRESENT__PRESENT__PRESENT

Global Forum combined with Water and Humanity Conference (Muscat October 2022)

It was an honor to contribute to the Global Forum combined with the Water and Humanity Conference in Muscat!

'Well of Hell': Omani cave team discover what lurks in Yemen’s strange sinkhole

 'Well of Hell': Omani cave team discover what lurks in Yemen’s strange sinkhole

Finally the Omani caves exploration team (OCET) explored the Well of Barhout located in Yemen's eastern province of Al-Mahra. 

The National News

So much more to explore on the Yemeni mainland... 

Rain, rain, rain...

Currently the tropical storm 06A (also known as Pawan) is slowly passing Socotra as shown below captured by the NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite:

The heavy rains are causing new floods again all over the island and roads are blocked by land slides. Following pictures are forwarded by Dr. Julian Jansen van Rensburg, currently on expedition on the island.

This vital water resources is currently just flowing into the sea... A proper meteorological network should be installed and maintained to really quantify the effects of these recently increasing cyclones hitting the island(s).

Revealing the Population History of Soqotra with Ancient DNA

Congrats to Dr. Julian Jansen van Rensburg, after a lot of work and effort he currently managed to reach the next level:

Revealing the Population History of Soqotra with Ancient  DNA!

More will come later, great news I wanted to share...

Socotra in Sicilia - FoS 18th International Conference and AGM -26th / 29th September 2019 Palermo Italy

Socotra is changing fast these days...

Therefore this year, the title of the next International Conference is "Socotra's pursuit of stability through heritage, conservation and sustainability".

All further details to be found on this brand new website: http://www.socotrainsicilia.it/

The 17th Annual General Meeting of the Friends of Soqotra and Symposium was held on 25 - 28 October, organised and hosted by the ARC-WH in Bahrain. Thanks to the organisers!

It was wonderful to see so many FoS again, this time with a lot of Soqotri attending and for the first time overseas in Bahrain.

The abstract book can be downloaded here, while the minutes of the AGM are available here.

Next year will be on an island more nearby, Sicily (Italy).

Mehazelo - Cinderella of Soqotra - The real folk tales by Vladimir Agafonov

For those who are not yet acquainted with this story, do check it out!

Thanks to the efforts of Vladimir Agafonov, translated tales got published in Russian in 1995, 1996 and 1997 in editions for children.

What many people not know, as Vladimir told me himself, is that it first published in a monthly illustrated newspaper in Moscow, and its illustrations editor choose Victor Duvidov's illustrations. Later Victor became very famous for his illustrations for the Russian translations of Rudyard Kipling's tales from the Jungle Book.

So, in fact Victor Duvidov was the first illustrator in the world to have illustrated Socotran folk tales!

Thanks for sharing Vladimir.


You can find it almost everywhere on the internet, the most known way.

The first vertebrate fossil from Socotra Island (Yemen) is an early Holocene Egyptian fruit bat

Hoq cave revealed a bat fossil covered in calcite years ago, in the meantime we know more and can finally share the today published article with all of you!

Kay Van Damme, Petr Benda, Dirk Van Damme, PeterDe Geest & Irka Hajdas (2018) The first vertebrate fossil from SocotraIsland (Yemen) is an early Holocene Egyptian fruit bat, Journal of NaturalHistory, 52:31-32, 2001-2024

The Yemeni island Socotra's unique environment is at risk from the conflict in the country.

From the BBC:

The Yemeni island Socotra's unique environment is at risk from the conflict in the country.

Some positive news from Socotra and community effort in eradicating one of the invasive species...

Thanks to Dr. K. Van Damme this news:

Some positive news from Socotra and community effort in eradicating one of the invasive species, appeared today, for your interest.

A record of Notostraca on Socotra Island and the importance of local conservation of the habitat

After the cave shrimps, now another article from Dr. K. Van Damme.

During the exploration and inventory of an archaeological site at the northern plain of the island (Eriosh), Kay discovered a triops on the island!

All details of the article to be found here: https://biotaxa.org/Zootaxa/article/view/zootaxa.4446.4.8