Early people lived and evolved in this area over a startling 210,000-year period, according to a ground-breaking archaeological study that discovered 80,000-year-old stone tools at Jebel Faya, Sharjah.
The key to the discovery is a complex toolkit: long blades and flakes made by exact bidirectional reduction, which is a sign of highly developed cognitive capacities and resource efficiency.
Thanks to luminescence dating, researchers found near-continuous occupation of the Faya palaeolandscape from around 210,000 years ago to 80,000 years ago—scattered across multiple wet and dry climate phases
This evidence challenges earlier theories that Arabia was just a migration corridor during these Ice Age windows.
Climatic context supports the settlement story: during Marine Isotope Stage 5a, shifting monsoon rainfall created lakes and grasslands in Arabia, enabling long-term human survival and innovation.
The initiative, headed by Dr. Knut Bretzke and involving teams from Oxford Brookes, the University of Tübingen, Freiburg, and the Sharjah Archaeology Authority, is constructing a strong case for Jebel Faya’s nomination as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
