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.
距离迪拜闪闪发光的塔楼和人工岛以东约一小时车程，一片更安静、更自然的景观正在形成。在鲁卜哈利沙漠最北边，一片藏红花色的沙海环绕着哈吉尔山脉。一系列苍白的山脊像鱼鳍一样从沙漠平原上拔地而起，其中最大的山脊 — Jabal al Fāyah — 海拔 412 米（1,352 英尺）。
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.
Landsat 8 卫星于 2025 年 10 月 23 日拍摄到了这张横跨阿拉伯联合酋长国北部沙迦酋长国的山脊图像。对于地质学家来说，这些石灰岩山脊提醒着该地区过去的水域，表明这片土地在数千万年前沉积岩层沉积时位于水下。
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 .
Jabal al Fāyah 起着屏障的作用，将风吹的沙子困在其西边的沙丘中。沙粒中含铁矿物质的风化使沙丘地带呈现橙色。在东部，从哈吉尔山脉延伸出来的重叠冲积扇的分支河道携带着来自玄武岩和其他深色镁铁质岩石的砾石和侵蚀沉积物。
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.
东部的深色岩石是萨迈伊蛇绿岩的一部分，被地质学家认为是世界上最大、保存最完好、最容易接触到的古代海洋岩石圈暴露地之一，岩石圈是地球的坚硬外层，包括地壳和上地幔。当构造板块碰撞时，像这样的海洋岩石圈通常会俯冲并回收回地幔。但在这个地区，特提斯海下方的一大片区域被刮掉并推到阿拉伯板块上，这一过程被称为仰冲。
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.
Jabal al Fāyah 山脊本身由海洋石灰岩组成，这些石灰岩在白垩纪晚期到古新世早期到中期的数千万年里沉积在蛇绿岩顶部。石灰石通常形成于温暖的浅海大陆边缘，通常在泻湖和珊瑚礁中，由海洋生物的贝壳和骨骼中发现的碳酸钙形成。在山脊的许多地方，可以看到珊瑚碎片和海洋无脊椎动物化石嵌入岩石中。化石岩位于 Jabal al Fāyah 以北几公里处，毗邻 Jabal Mulayḩah 石灰岩山脊。它含有大量的蜗牛、蛤和海胆遗骸。
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.
对于考古学家来说，这些山脊是人类适应和生存的最近故事的中心，这个故事在过去的几十万年里上演了。山脊和部分周围景观（将于 2025 年被联合国教科文组织列为世界遗产）散布着数十个考古遗址，这些遗址可以追溯到 21 万至 12 万年前的旧石器时代中期，人类对阿拉伯半岛的占领。在那段时期，解剖学上的现代人类（智人）大批迁出非洲，与尼安德特人等其他群体共享这个星球。
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.
许多遗址都藏有石片、刀片、刮刀、手斧和其他石器。这个考古宝库提供了现代人类在恶劣的沙漠环境中生存的早期证据，并提出了现代智人离开非洲时可能采取的路线的问题。
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.
地质证据表明，山脊东侧定期形成湖泊，提供了重要的食物和水资源，为早期居民在这种恶劣的气候下生存提供了支持。沿着山脊的岩石悬垂物可以提供避暑和防风的庇护所。一些遗址显示早在 21 万年前就有间歇性居住的证据，这使其成为阿拉伯半岛上人类居住的最早迹象之一。
NASA Earth Observatory images by Lauren Dauphin, using Landsat data from the U.S. Geological Survey . Story by Adam Voiland.
NASA 地球观测站图像由 Lauren Dauphin 使用美国地质调查局的陆地卫星数据拍摄。亚当·沃伊兰的故事。