Ancient UAE Was Active Trading Hub

Archaeologists now claim that the Arabian Peninsula was home to developed settlements during the same period.

You might want to set aside those early school lessons that taught you the dawn of Western civilisation was confined to Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq).

An expert panel of archaeologists from around the world now claim the Arabian Peninsula – long thought to be a barren wasteland from around 5,000BC – was home to developed settlements during the same period.

In the August 3 edition of Science magazine, archaeologists attending an Italian conference contend that developed people lived in a string of small civilised trading posts from Mesopotamia to ancient India including lands in and around the UAE.

Science magazine writer Andrew Lawler wrote: "While Mesopotamia is still the cradle of civilisation in the sense that urban evolution began there, we now know that the area between Mesopotamia and India spawned a host of cities."

The American Association for Advancement of Science said in a statement: "It’s becoming clear that these centres traded goods and could have shared technology and architecture. Recovered artefacts such as beads, shells, vessels, seals and game boards show that a network linked these civilisations."

Word of the new academic findings is good news, UAE archaeologist Ahmad Hilal said, because it gives Emiratis a deeper and more profound understanding of their past.

A staffer with the Ras Al Khaimah Department of Antiquities and Museums, Hilal said new physical evidence dug up along the Gulf coast from the Hafit Period (3,200-2,600BC) shows an advanced people.

"Some people are mistaken, they think there was nothing here in the UAE, no people a very long time ago," Hilal said.

"But if you look at the Umm Al Nar culture (2,600-2,000 BC), it is very colourful. It shows the people here were very developed with pottery, trade and local culture."

According to the Department’s own study: "Evidence suggests that trade in copper with Mesopotamia and the Indus valley made the area of the United Arab Emirates wealthy."

The department said the trade was of such note that it earned this region a mention in ancient Mesopotamian texts as the "Land of Magan".

Hilal pointed out that society had developed to a degree that fine ancient burial tombs have been found throughout Ras Al Khaimah and the rest of the UAE.

One Umm Al Nar period tomb uncovered by archaeologists contains the remains of 100 people.

The Ubaid Period is the oldest period known in Ras Al Khaimah. Large shell heaps and surface collections near Jazirat Al Hamra gave the first hint of human activities at these places. The findings of pottery, beads, net sinkers and flint tools represent the former presence of a nomadic population living at the coast during the summer months

The Hafit Period saw burial mounds built on high mountain plateaus from local stone. These structures have been located in Khatt, in the mountains above Ras Al Khaimah and in Wadi Al Bih, as well as in Wadi Al Qawr, where two Hafit tombs were excavated.

The Umm Al Nar Culture is the most important period concerning the development of civilisation in the UAE. Evidence suggests that trade in copper with Mesopotamia and the Indus valley made the area of the United Arab Emirates wealthy during that period and Mesopotamian sources mentioned it as the "Land of Magan".

Not to be a nitpicker, but that “Land of Magan” looks to me to overlay modern Oman, not the UAE.

And that makes a lot of sense to me as the Batinah region of Oman is agriculturally productive in a way not seen in most of the arabian peninsula, and could have supported a considerable population in ancient days as a fresh water lens is just within reach in normally dug wells in may places along this coast.

This is to say nothing of the significant inland oases which are also agriculturally productive.

And copper, you say? Well, that comes from the mountains just inland from Sohar, the major city of the Batinah and the legendary home of Sinbad the Sailor.

Digging In The Land Of Magan

Volume 50 Number 3, May/June 1997
by M. Redha Bhacker and Bernadette Bhacker

Excavations yield evidence of cultures spanning some 8,000 years.

Oman's early settlers were Neolithic pastoralists and seafaring people who worked trade routes from Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley. Arrowheads found in Qatar in 1960 by Danish prehistorian Holgar Kapel and ash from ancient campfires found in Muscat in 1983 are the earliest evidence of the nomads who followed their flocks south from the Levant, settling the Arabian peninsula 8,000 years ago. Remains of Neolithic camps found during the past three decades suggest that as Arabia's climate became wetter, these herders thrived, roaming in widely dispersed groups from Syria and Iraq in the north to Dhofar in southern Oman.

The resources of the Arabian Gulf supported fishing communities along the coast. In the 1970s Italian archaeologists unearthed shell and fishbone middens, evidence of a 7,000-year-old fishing village at Ras al Hamra, a rocky promontory in Qurum, ten miles west of Muscat. Carbon dating indicates that these middens and burials were in continuous use from 6000 to 3000 B.C. A dearth of faunal remains suggests that the community was isolated from inland areas, where small game was abundant.

In the 1950s Danish archaeologists excavating grave mounds in Bahrain, northwest of Oman, found 4,200-year-old settlements and temples of the city-state of Dilmun, known as the city of the gods in ancient Sumerian literature. Their 1959 discovery on the island of Umm an-Nar off Abu Dhabi of a second, previously unknown culture contemporary with Dilmun was unexpected. At the site an outer wall enclosed circular graves, 15 to 40 feet in diameter and often two stories high, in which as many as 30 people were buried. Spurred on by the discoveries at Dilmun and Umm an-Nar, Danish archaeologists excavated 200 single-chambered burial cairns in 1961 near Jabal Hafit on the Oman-United Arab Emirates border. There they discovered a culture earlier than that of Dilmun or Umm an-Nar. Excavation yielded jars with geometric designs painted in black, white, and plum red; copper and bronze pins; and stone and faience beads. The jars were the same type as those used in southern Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C. Unfortunately there is little trace of the ancient settlements associated with these tombs.

Was Oman the land of Magan, which appears in Sumerian cuneiform texts ca. 2300 B.C. as a source of copper and diorite for the flourishing city-states of Mesopotamia? These texts tell us that ships with a cargo capacity of 20 tons sailed up the Arabian Gulf, stopping at Dilmun to take on fresh water before continuing to Mesopotamia. They also say that Magan lay south of Sumer and Dilmun, was frequented by Indus Valley travelers, and had high mountains from which diorite or gabbro for black statues was quarried. Research since the 1970s has located significant copper deposits and more than 150 medieval Islamic smelting sites. Excavations by the German Mining Museum have identified numerous Magan-period (2500-2000 B.C.) slag heaps under tons of medieval slag and third millennium remains from mining and smelting at the oasis village of Maysar in central-eastern Oman. A hoard of bun-shaped copper ingots found in a small fireplace indicates the form in which copper was traded.

Today, oil has taken the place of copper and frankincense as the source of Oman's wealth. Development has led to the destruction of many historical and ancient sites--some before they have been identified, let alone excavated. We can only hope that the remaining sites can be saved for excavation before they are swallowed up in the country's march toward modernity.

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