Digging Back in Time in the UAE

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Jabal al Fāyah rises from the Rub’ al Khali desert in an image captured by the

OLI

(Operational Land Imager) on

Landsat 8

on October 23, 2025.

NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

About an hour’s drive east of

Dubai’s

gleaming towers and

artificial islands

, a quieter, more natural landscape takes shape. At the far northern edge of the

Rub’ al Khali

, a saffron-colored sand sea laps against the

Al-Hajar Mountains

. A series of pale ridges rises finlike from the desert plain, with the largest—Jabal al Fāyah—standing 412 meters (1,352 feet) above sea level.

The

Landsat 8

satellite captured this image of the ridges cutting across the Emirate of Sharjah in the northern part of the United Arab Emirates on October 23, 2025. To geologists, the

limestone

ridges are a reminder of the region’s watery past, signs that this land lay underwater tens of millions of years ago when the

sedimentary rock layers

were deposited.

Jabal al Fāyah functions as a barrier, trapping windblown sand in dune fields to its west. The

weathering

of iron-bearing minerals in the sand grains gives the dune fields their orange hue. To the east, the branching channels of overlapping

alluvial fans

extending from the Al-Hajar Mountains carry gravels and eroded sediments from basalts and other

dark mafic rocks

The dark rocks to the east—part of the

Samail Ophiolite

—are known to geologists for being among the world’s largest, best-preserved, and most accessible exposures of ancient oceanic

lithosphere

, the rigid outer layer of Earth that includes both the

crust

and

upper mantle

. Oceanic lithosphere like this is normally

subducted

and recycled back into the mantle when tectonic plates collide. But in this area, a large section from beneath the

Tethys Sea

was

scraped off

and thrust onto the Arabian plate in a process called obduction.

Dubai lies to the west of the limestone ridges, and the Al-Hajar Mountains lie to the east, in an image acquired by the

OLI

(Operational Land Imager) on

Landsat 8

on October 23, 2025.

NASA Earth Observatory / Lauren Dauphin

The Jabal al Fāyah ridges themselves are made up of marine limestone that was deposited on top of the ophiolite over tens of millions of years spanning the

late Cretaceous

through the early to

mid-Paleocene

. Limestone typically forms along continental margins in warm, shallow oceans, often in lagoons and coral reefs, out of the

calcium carbonate

found in the shells and skeletons of marine life. In many parts of the ridges, coral fragments and marine invertebrate fossils are visible embedded in the rock. A feature called

Fossil Rock

sits a few kilometers north of Jabal al Fāyah and adjacent to the limestone ridge Jabal Mulayḩah. It contains an abundance of snail, clam, and sea urchin remains.

For archaeologists, the ridges are at the center of a much more recent tale of human adaptation and survival that has played out in just the past few hundred thousand years. The ridges and parts of the surrounding landscape—inscribed as a

UNESCO World Heritage site

in 2025—are dotted with dozens of archaeological sites that trace human occupation on the Arabian Peninsula back to between 210,000 and 120,000 years ago, to the

Middle Paleolithic

. That was a period when waves of anatomically modern humans

(

Homo sapiens

)

migrated out of Africa and shared the planet with other groups such as Neanderthals.

Many of the sites contain stone flakes, blades, scrapers, hand axes, and other stone tools. The archaeological treasure trove offers early evidence of modern humans surviving in a harsh desert environment and

raises questions

about the routes modern

Homo sapiens

may have taken on their journey out of Africa.

Geological evidence indicates that lakes periodically formed on the east side of the ridge, providing critical food and water resources that would have supported early inhabitants in this unforgiving climate. Rocky overhangs along the ridge would have provided shelter from the heat and wind. Some of the sites show evidence of intermittent occupation beginning as early as

210,000 years ago

, making this one of the

earliest signs

of human habitation on the Arabian Peninsula.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the

U.S. Geological Survey

. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

October 23, 2025

JPEG (3.89 MB)

References & Resources

Armitage, S.,

et al.

(2011)

The Southern Route “Out of Africa”: Evidence for an Early Expansion of Modern Humans into Arabia

Science, 331(6016), 453-456.

Bretzke, K.,

et al.

(2025)

Archaeology, chronology, and sedimentological context of the youngest Middle Palaeolithic assemblage from Jebel Faya, United Arab Emirates

Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences

, 17(60).

Bretzke, K.,

et al.

(2022)

Multiple phases of human occupation in Southeast Arabia between 210,000 and 120,000 years ago

Scientific Reports, 12, 1600.

Bretzke, K.,

et al.

(2013)

The environmental context of Paleolithic settlement at Jebel Faya, Emirate Sharjah, UAE

Quaternary International, 300, 83-93.

Cond

Nast Traveller

(2025, July 15)

This new UNESCO World Heritage site in the UAE preserves the Middle East’s earliest evidence of modern humans

. Accessed June 4, 2026.

Kamran, K., via Substack (2025, February 18)

The Stone Blades of Jebel Faya: Rewriting the Story of Early Humans in Arabia

. Accessed June 4, 2026.

Phys.org (2022, February 1)

Early human settlement on the Arabian Peninsula less influenced by climate than previously thought

. Accessed June 4, 2026.

Smithsonian (2025)

What does it mean to be human?

Accessed June 4, 2026.

UNESCO (2025)

Faya Palaeolandscape

. Accessed June 4, 2026.

Visit Sharjah (2025)

Fossil Rock

. Accessed June 4, 2026.