About Sharjah : A window to history

Sharjah’s Jebel Fayah excavation site reveals 120,000-year-old human presence After years of excavation, Sharjah’s Jebel Fayah opens a new window to the history of the mankind through the more than 30,000 artifacts unearthed from an 85,000-year-old ancient city. More than just sand dune bashing and desert trips, tourists and archaeology enthusiasts now have some interesting new findings in the area. Jebel Fayah has been the focus of years of excavation, yielding thousands of human tools that expose migration to the site characterised by its various cultural periods and historic phases extending from Middle Paleolithic to the 18th century A.D. Archaeologists have also dated the stone tools back to the Neolithic Period, which belong to the fourth millennium and third millennium B.C. Currently, excavation work is being carried out as part of a joint programme by the Directorate of Antiquities at the Culture and Information Department in Sharjah and the Institute of Prehistoric Studies and Research at the German University of Tubingen ?since 2004. German archaeologist Knut Bretzke of Tubingen University, head of Jebel Fayah excavation team, says that tools from the Stone Age dated back to 120,000 years have traced the presence of mobile herders from Africa in this ancient city through Egypt. “This is the oldest human remains outside Africa. We have discovered four different layers of human activities in this site suggesting four waves of migration. Only the first one came from Africa, and the remaining three from different regions, but still under further study.” He says that the site is the only one in Arabia with four different layers starting from Stone Age and that makes it very interesting. “The site finds dating back to 120,000 years of human existence has made us understand how and where human beings came here from, how they lived here, and where they were going.” Bretzke explains that only Africans, among human species, used to modify tools. “If they had stones, they polished the edges to make them sharper and retouched them to give shapes. Africans used different methods to modify and this kind of technology is only typical to them. This kind of tools we found here makes us conclude that Africans were the first wave of migration to ancient Sharjah 120,000 years ago.” Robert Ghukasyan, Armenian excavation assistant, makes sure that all daily find will be measured and labeled by finding the coordinates using a computer installed at the site. “I am measuring the exact position of the artifacts in the excavation grid so we will know horizontally and vertically the coordinates or the Y and X axis, clean the find and label them with Bretzke.” Part of the tools discovered coincides with the time when man left Africa and reached Australia around 50,000 years ago. In collaboration with earlier finds, the archaeologists found that man moved from east Africa to the south of the Arabian Peninsula and then to the northern coasts of the Indian Ocean and South Asia. They crossed the seas when the sea level was low, to the islands now known as Indonesia, a proof that they knew navigation that allowed them to sail to Australia. It could also be assumed that some of the ancestors of Australia’s first residents stayed in the rocky shelters on the foot of Jebel Fayah mountain before proceeding to Australia. The global significance of the Jebel Fayah finds has put it in the limelight that also lures international tourists and many scientists and archaeologists to the area. From their sand dune experience nearby the excavation site, tourists, mostly Italians, British, French and Germans catch glimpses of date plantations and camel tracks as the sun’s rays flood the deserts sands. Jeremy Sands of Britain says: “I love this nature tour. It is amazing to see hordes of camels spread around the area. I wonder how they survived all these years when you can hardly find green desert vegetation around?,” he says. French Angelique Marseille feels too glad to discover this significant find as part of the nature tour. “It is great. At least, I know something new in this trip.”