Throughout its history, the UAE has been at the crossroads of many cultures. Recent archaeological finds at Jebel Faya, on the eastern side of the Hajar Mountains, have pushed the earliest evidence of man in the Emirates as far back as 130,000 years ago, in the Palaeolithic or ‘Old Stone Age’ period.
It was around this time that modern human beings first emerged out of Africa and the finds from Jebel Faya, including early stone tools, coupled with the results of a global DNA project, have suggested that the UAE may have been on the route for the migration of early humans into Asia. If that is proved, it will revolutionise our understanding of the history of Mankind – it was previously thought that this migration did not begin until around 80,000 years later.