The United Arab Emirates (the UAE or the Emirates) is a country in the eastern part of the Arabian Peninsula, located on the southeastern coast of the Persian Gulf and the northwestern coast of the Gulf of Oman. The UAE has a history of human habitation, transmigration and trade spanning over 125,000 years. Pastoralist, nomadic Paleolithic and Neolithic communities thrived in the area until the 4th millennium BCE. The area was home to the Bronze Age Magan people, known to the Sumerians, who traded with the Harappan culture of the Indus Valley, Afghanistan and Bactria, and the Levant.
Through the three defined Iron Ages and the subsequent Hellenistic period, the area was an important coastal trading entrepôt. It was Islamised in the 7th century, when it again emerged as an important centre for trade, particularly around the ports of Julfar, Dibba and Khor Fakkan. Linked to the Eastern Arab trading network that centred around the Kingdom of Hormuz, these ports formed an important link in the Arab monopoly of trade between the East and Europe.
In the early years of the 16th century, the Portuguese under Afonso de Albuquerque invaded the area and disrupted the Arab Eastern trade networks, triggering a decline in the Arab dominance of the Eastern trade networks and a rise in regional conflict. Conflicts between the maritime communities of the Trucial Coast and the British led to the sacking of Ras Al Khaimah by British forces, which resulted in the first of several British treaties with the coastal rulers in 1820 (leading to the adoption of the name the Trucial States)Balfour-Paul, G., The End of Empire in the Middle East: Britain's Relinquishment of Power in her Last Three Arab Dependencies, Cambridge University Press, 1984, and their status as a British semi-protectorate.
An early-1968 British decision to withdraw from its involvement in the Trucial States led to the decision to form a federation between two of the most influential Trucial rulers, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi and Sheikh Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum of Dubai, who shook hands on 18 February 1968 in a desert tent between their emirates. They met with the rulers of the other five Trucial States, together with Bahrain and Qatar, to discuss a federation on 25 February, and in a 27 February joint announcement named the intended federation The Federation of the Arab Emirates.
The United Arab Emirates achieved independence from Britain on 2 December 1971. Six of the seven emirates (Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ajman, Umm Al Quwain and Fujairah) declared their union that day and the seventh, Ras Al Khaimah, joined the federation on 10 February 1972.
Prehistory The area known today as the United Arab Emirates has yielded evidence of human habitation dating back 125,000 years and formed one of the routes of human dispersal from Africa to populate the world. Its archaeology attests to periods of Paleolithic, Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age occupation, prior to the Pre-Islamic Recent (PIR) and Islamic era.
Dispersal from Africa Early hominid occupation in the UAE is attested by finds of knapped flint tools among extensive assemblages found at Jebel Barakah in Abu Dhabi yielding a date of 200,000 BCE. The earliest evidence for the occupation of the area today known as the UAE by anatomically modern humans, Homo Sapiens, is found at Jebel Faya, where in 2011 archaeologists found a lithic assemblage including hand-axes and several kinds of scrapers and perforators. These objects resemble the tools used by early modern humans in East Africa. According to thermoluminescence dating, the artefacts are 125,000 years old.
The find at Faya represents some of the earliest evidence of modern humanity outside Africa, indicating that humans left Africa much earlier than previously thought. The site, today a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been preserved with discoveries related to later cultures, including tombs and other finds from the Hafit, Umm Al Nar, Wadi Suq, Iron Age, Hellenistic and Islamic periods on display at Sharjah's Mleiha Archaeological Centre.
Neolithic
Neolithic occupation in the area of the modern United Arab Emirates is now understood as part of a wider Arabian Gulf coastal world, rather than as a series of isolated sites. Recent excavations have shown that communities were established on the coast and offshore islands by the seventh millennium BCE, including early stone-built structures on Ghagha Island in the western Emirate of Abu Dhabi. These communities relied heavily on maritime resources, including fishing, shellfish gathering and the exploitation of marine mammals, while also using stone tools, shell implements, plaster vessels and pottery.
Long-distance exchange was also a feature of Neolithic life in the region. Ubaid-period pottery recovered from sites in the UAE indicates contact across the Gulf with Mesopotamia, while evidence from Marawah Island includes stone-built settlement remains, funerary spaces and early pearling. Funerary practices are known from both inland and coastal contexts, including the necropolis of Jebel Buhais in Sharjah and Neolithic burial deposits at coastal and island sites.
During the fourth millennium BCE, the Neolithic sequence in eastern Arabia gradually came to an end in association with increasing aridity, falling lake levels and dune reactivation. This environmental deterioration contributed to the so-called Dark Millennium, a period of reduced archaeological visibility across much of the region between approximately 4000 and 3200 BCE. The process was not a complete abandonment of the coast: Akab Island in Umm al-Quwain continued to provide evidence for maritime activity, including a structured dugong bone mound dated to the late fourth millennium BCE.
Hafit period
The Hafit period followed the Dark Millennium as the re-emergence of human habitation on the western coast of the Emirates. The Hafit period was named after finds of over 300 burials of distinctive beehive-shaped tombs in the mountainous area of Jebel Hafit in the Al Ain Region. The period defines early Bronze Age human settlement in the United Arab Emirates and Oman as from 3,200 to 2,600 BCE. Hafit period tombs and remains have also been found across the UAE and Oman at sites such as Bidaa Bint Saud, Jebel Buhais and Buraimi.
Pottery finds at Hafit period sites demonstrate trading links to Mesopotamia, contiguous to the Jemdat Nasr period (3100 – 2900 BCE). Finds have shown locally manufactured pottery emerged during the transition between the Hafit and Umm Al Nar periods, approximately 2800 to 2700 BCETypological and Chronological Consideration of the Ceramics at Bat, Oman - Christopher P. Thornton & Royal Omar Ghazal. It is now thought the transition between the two cultural periods is marked by a decline in links between Southeastern Arabia and Mesopotamia, a pattern that would be repeated, albeit more emphatically, in the transitional period between the later Umm Al Nar and Wadi Suq cultures.
Bronze Age
Umm Al Nar (also known as Umm an-Nar) was a Bronze Age culture defined by archaeologists as spanning 2600 to 2000 BCE in the area of the present-day UAE and Oman. The etymology derives from the island of the same name, the first 'find site' of burials from this period, which is adjacent to the city of Abu Dhabi.UAE History: 20,000 — 2,000 years ago - UAEinteract The key site is well-protected and its location, today between a refinery and a sensitive military area, is restricted from public access.
A characteristic element of the Umm Al Nar culture is circular tombs, typically with well-fitted ashlar stones in the outer wall and multiple human remains within.The Archaeology of Ras al-Khaimah The Umm Al Nar culture demonstrates evidence of continued trade links with the Sumerian and Akkadian kingdoms and the Indus Valley. The increasing sophistication of the Umm Al Nar people is demonstrated by a richer material culture and evidence of the domestication and husbandry of animals.
Umm Al Nar was followed by a long 200-year transition to the Wadi Suq culture, which dominated the area from 2000 to 1300 BCE. Key archaeological sites, pointing to major trading cities extant during both periods, are located on the western and eastern coasts of the UAE and in Oman and include Dalma, Umm Al Nar, Sufouh, Ed Dur, Tell Abraq and Kalba. Burial sites at Shimal and Seih Al Harf in Ras Al Khaimah have evidence of transitional Umm Al Nar to Wadi Suq burials.
Camels and other animals were domesticated during the Wadi Suq era (2000-1300 BCE), leading to increased inland settlement and the cultivation of diverse crops which included the date palm. Increasingly sophisticated metallurgy, pottery and stone carving led to the development of more effective weaponry and other implements, even as trading links with the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia dwindled and the Wadi Suq people focused increasingly inwards.
Iron Age
Throughout three Iron Ages (Iron Age I, 1200–1000 BCE; Iron Age II, 1000–600 BCE; and Iron Age III, 600–300 BCE) and the Hellenistic Mleiha period (after 300 BCE), Southeastern Arabia was occupied by a number of forces (including the Achaemenid Empire), leading to the construction of a number of fortified settlements.
The development of increasingly complex irrigation ditches and waterways, falaj (plural aflaj) took place during the Iron Age II period and finds at Bidaa bint Saud and Thuqeibah from this period pre-date finds of qanat waterways in Iran. Early finds of aflaj, particularly those around the desert city of Al Ain, have been cited as the earliest evidence of the construction of these waterways. More and more complex systems of irrigation evolved and the Iron Age II era saw the emergence of centralised authority imposed over access to water with finds of bronze figures and distinctive pottery testifing to a widespread snake cult, often linked to evidence of collective worship and cohesive communities.
The UAE has an unusual richness of Iron Age archaeological finds, particularly evidenced by the metallurgical centre of Saruq Al Hadid, in the desert to the south of present-day Dubai, which has yielded a trove of thousands of arrow-heads, gold, carnelian and bone jewellery and ceramics - in all over 12,000 items have been recovered from this site alone. Other important Iron Age settlements in the UAE include Al Thuqeibah, Rumailah, Bidaa bint Saud, Ed Dur, Qusais, Muweilah and Tell Abraq.
The Iron Age buildings found at Rumailah are typical of those in the region, at Iron Age I and II sites such as Al Thuqeibah and Muweilah, with a number of row dwellings, although lacking the perimeter walls found at Thuqeibah. A columned hall at Rumailah provides a further link to Muweilah, while a number of pyramidal seals found there echo with similar objects discovered at Bidaa bint Saud.
Enabled by the domestication of the camel in the region, thought to have taken place around 1000 BCE, Muweilah's trade included the manufacture of copper goods, with "extensive casting spillage from the manufacture of copper items found throughout the site". Muweilah is relatively unique in its early and extensive adoption of iron goods, thought to have been imported from Iran. Hundreds of grinding stones indicate the consumption of both barley and wheat. Artefacts recovered from Muweilah are contiguous to those found from the same period at Tell Abraq and other Iron Age settlements, evidence of an emerging uniform material across the settled areas of the time.
The Iron Age II period also saw the construction of fortifications, with a number of towers and other buildings offering protection to aflaj and the crops they watered. Hili 14 in Al Ain, Madhab Fort and Awhala Fort in Fujairah as well as Jebel Buhais near Madam in Sharjah and Rafaq and Al Nasla in the Wadi Qor in Ras Al Khaimah are all fortifications dating to this time.
Mleiha