80,000-Yr-Old Stone Blades Crafted by Homo Sapiens Remain Sharp Still, Tell a Story of Migration and Craftsmanship

Human migration has led us to discover new regions on our planet and build settlements in those places. As the civilizations advanced, humans started using various tools that they perfected and shaped over time. According to an international study conducted by experts from Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany, 80,000-year-old stone blades made by Homo Sapiens in Arabia, were uncovered. The research was published in 2025 on Springer Nature Link.

The stone tools were unearthed at Jebel Faya, an archaeological site near Al Madam in the Emirate of Sharjah, U.A.E. The site is almost 60 km inland from both the Persian Gulf to the West and the Oman Sea to the East and is also deemed as one of the most complex Paleolithic sites in Arabia. Previous excavation works on the site brought up tool assemblages from the Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze Age. It proved the existence of human settlements in the region between 210,000 and 10,000 years ago. The chronometric data obtained from the site indicated the youngest Middle Paleolithic layer at Jebel Faya.

The stone tool assemblages from this period had distinct characteristics such as the parallel edges were shaped like elongated flakes. Those tools were mostly used bidirectionally and are concrete proof of the systematic production of stone blades on the Arabian Peninsula. The excavation of the site was carried out as a collaborative project between the University of Tübingen, Germany, and Sharjah Archaeology Authority from 2003 to 2017. ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ 

"Our results indicate that South Arabia played a completely different role in the establishment and cultural diversification of Homo sapiens populations in Southwest Asia than the north of the peninsula," Dr. Knut Bretzke from the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, mentioned in the study. "The discovery sheds new light on the settlement history of Arabia and thus also on the routes that Homo sapiens used to spread out of Africa." The study also highlighted how Arabia used to have permanent rivers and lake formations that allowed civilization to thrive in various areas near them and prompted the production of stone tools across the peninsula.

The discovery at Jebel Faya also suggested that human civilization in northern and southern Arabia went through significant cultural developments as the environment turned arid. This also led to the migration of Homo Sapiens from Africa to parts of Eurasia. The exodus of early humans continued in waves for over 150,000 years and one of the migrations took place along the southern edge of the Arabian Peninsula about 80,000 years ago. ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ ㅤ

Despite finding stone tools, no human remains were recovered from the Paleolithic period in southern Arabia. There was no fossilized evidence such as bones or teeth from the region that limited the researcher's ability to directly correlate those stone tools to specific genetic lineages of Homo Sapiens. "We conclude that site FAY-NE1 at Jebel Faya contains an archive of human settlement in the region. Re-occupation of the site occurred after a significant gap during the early Holocene," the study concluded.