Jebel Faya industry and the Arabian dispersal route
Industria de Jebel Faya y la ruta árabe de dispersión
- Date
- c. 125 ka · confidence low
- Place
- Jebel Faya, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
- Credited to
- Late Pleistocene human populations (makers debated)
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Stone tools from a rock shelter in Sharjah, dated to c. 125 ka and African in character, interpreted by their excavators as the trace of modern humans crossing southern Arabia long before the classic model (Armitage et al., 2011).
The attribution to Homo sapiens and the African origin of the industry are disputed: there are no human fossils at the site and a local evolution of technologies already present in Arabia has been proposed.
What it led to
- a hypothesis of an early dispersal via the Bab el-Mandeb strait and southern Arabia
- revision of the role of wet palaeoclimates in Arabian occupation
- Jebel Faya as a key site for the Palaeolithic of the Gulf