Were either of the two species of raven found in Arabia – the Fan-tailed raven and the Brown-necked raven – among the “1514 contained sufficient detail to allow identification with confidence” mentioned in the article @misterme987 links to? Were doves?
Arabia presumably isn’t relevant. We need Mesopotamian ravens. There is in fact no raven found in most of the Fertile Crescent. Brown-necked raven is found in the Tigris-Euphrates Delta, so perhaps that’s the one intended. Common raven comes close, just barely into northern Iraq, so that could be it too. Fan-tailed raven gets nowhere near. I doubt that any of these could be distinguished in rock carvings.
The rock-art was found in Arabia (Shuwaymis, Saudi Arabia, to be precise) and the first prehistoric flood mentioned in the OP was centred in Arabia – so yes, I think Arabia is relevant (at least to this thread – whether it is relevant to whichever flood was ultimately behind the Noahic Flood legend – who knows!).
The paper covers only mammals. Here is a copy that isn’t paywalled, if you’re interested.
Now of course there’s no reason to believe that any particular flood inspired the story. So I suppose that any species of raven or large crow found anywhere within a thousand miles of the Middle East would be good enough. And there’s probably no significant difference for the purpose of pointing out the absurdity of the story.
There was actually one bird – the ostrich. ![]()
However, this section seems to indicate that the rock-art would be near-useless in identifying local fauna that might be brought on an ark (assuming, of course we got beyond the question of why an ark would be needed for a local flood):
Despite the large sample size and high rate of confident animal identifications, only 16 animal species could be identified in the rock art of Shuwaymis (Figure 3). This pattern is partly the result of a culturally driven omission of smaller animals with a body weight below ca. 10–15 kg in the depictions. However, compared with similar bodies of rock art in North Africa, this represents an extraordinarily narrow species spectrum (Guagnin, 2014; see also Le Quellec, 1998; Vernet, 1995). The rock art is dominated by a small number of frequently depicted animals (746 camels, 210 ibex, 202 dogs, 120 ostriches and 104 cattle). Ibex are depicted throughout all phases of rock art creation at Shuwaymis and may have been a symbol of religious activity; for the pre-Islamic periods, ritual ibex hunts are attested in South Arabian inscriptions (Maraqten, 2015; Serjeant, 1976: 84). Engravings of ostrich are also very common and are often depicted in association with domestic camels (out of 49 panels containing ostrich depictions, 44 showed an association with domestic camels). With the exception of ibex and ostrich, all frequently depicted species are domesticates and as such clearly had considerable economic value.
- Lack of notice
- Insufficient lifespan