Story
The story of Jabal Al Fayah
On this limestone hill near Mleiha, archaeologists found stone tools that shed new light on humanity's journey out of Africa. At a rock shelter on the northeastern end of Jebel Faya, a layer of tools was dated to approximately 125,000 years ago.
Their shapes link them to tools of a similar age found in Sudan, supporting the idea of a southern route by which modern humans spread from Africa; from here they would have crossed to Iran and moved north and east. The wider landscape of Faya holds tools and burials showing human presence between 210,000 and 2,300 years ago.
A French team first found and test-excavated the site in the 1980s, and since 2003 the Sharjah archaeology authority and the University of Tübingen have dug here systematically, uncovering about 28,000 stone artefacts in front of the shelter alone. In 2025 the site was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and its finds are shown at the Mleiha Archaeological Centre.
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