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New light thrown on UAE’s oldest inhabitants

AL AIN — New discoveries by archaeologists from Sharjah and Germany show that humans lived in the UAE as early as 85,000 years ago, in the Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) period, according to a paper presented at the 5th Annual Symposium on Recent Archaeological Research in the Emirates, held in Al Ain last weekend.

The earliest sites from the UAE, known prior to the latest discoveries, have been dated to the Neolithic or Late Stone Age period, around 7,500 years ago.

The discoveries were made at Jebel Faya, south of the town of Dhaid, in Sharjah, by a joint team from the Sharjah Directorate of Archaeology and Germany’s University of Tubingen, and pushes the history of the UAE people back by over 75,000 years.

Announcing the discovery to participants in the Symposium, Tubingen’s Professor Hans-Peter Uerpmann said that two years of excavation at the Jebel Faya site had produced evidence of several layers of ancient occupation, of which the most recent were from the Iron Age, which ran from around 1,300 BC to 300 BC, and from the Bronze Age, which lasted from around 3,000 BC to 1,300 BC. Beneath that was extensive evidence of occupation from the Neolithic period.

“Below the layers containing stone tools from the Neolithic period, however, there were at least four, possibly five, deeper layers, containing stone tools from the Palaeolithic period, Uerpmann said.

Dating of the sandy layers above and below the layers containing the Palaeolithic tools, he said, had shown that the bottom layer could be dated to around 85,000 years ago, and the upper layer to around 28,000 years ago, at the peak of the last great Ice Age. The tools, therefore, must have been deposited, at several intervals between those two dates.

Studies of the tools indicated that they were clearly distinct in terms of their shapes from Palaeolithic tools found in Africa and Asia from the same period, Uerpmann said, suggesting that this might indicate that the Arabian peninsula was at that time playing an important role in the dispersal of early Man from Africa into Asia.

Other tools of Palaeolithic type have also been found near Fili, also in Sharjah and on the western edge of the Hajar Mountains, and at Jebel Barakah, in the far west of Abu Dhabi, but the Jebel Faya site is the first Palaeolithic site in the Emirates to have provided a clear indication of dating.

A total of fifteen papers on recent archaeological work in the Emirates were presented at the Symposium, which was organised by the Zayed Centre for History and Heritage, part of the Emirates Heritage Club, and was held under the patronage of Deputy Prime Minister and EHC Chairman Shaikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Other papers included a report on a Bronze Age copper smelting site in Wadi Hilo, Sharjah, a study of a coastal site at Hamriyyah, also in Sharjah, which was occupied from the Neolithic period to the Iron Age, a report on another Noelithic site on the island of Akab, in Umm Al Quwain, and a study of hilltop villages from the Later Islamic period, from around the 16^th-18^th Century AD, in Ras Al Khaimah.

Among other reports were a review of the programme of restoration of historic buildings being undertaken in Al Ain by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, ADACH, and an examination of Neolithic tools from the island of Dalma, in western Abu Dhabi.

Another important paper dealt with the results of a detailed survey and rescue excavation undertaken in the Wadi Madhab, in Fujairah, which was funded by a Dubai-based company planning to build a residential development on the site, the first time that a property developer in the UAE has ever financed ‘rescue archaeology’ on a development site.

“The papers presented at this year’s symposium show that there is still much to be discovered about the early history of UAE and its people,” according to Dr Hassan Naboodah, the Director of the Zayed Centre for History and Heritage.