The UAE has a rich history and culture as demonstrated by many studies based on ancient documents and artifacts discovered in this land. Many national and foreign exploration expeditions in the UAE from 1958 up till now have shed light on the civilization of the people of this region since the end of the 4th Millennium BC.
The Emirates do have a history that is fascinating and it goes back a long way,
Not Just Deserts but 9000 Years of Trade as said Peter Hellyer arachnologist.
The history of the Emirates going back 125,000 years and culminating in the country’s union in 1971.
Below are some important Archelogies discovery in UAE:
- Miocene fauna, 5-6 million years ago when what is now the UAE was a bit like the savannahs of East Africa.
- Ancestors of horses, sabretooth cats, and hippopotamuses.
- Two kinds of elephants, 6 million years ago , two kinds of elephants one had the lower jaw with the tusk curved down, and the other kind had four tusks, two on the top and two on the bottom.
- The fossilized trackway in Mleisa (Western Region, Abu Dhabi) is one of the longest and best preserved of ancient mammalian from the Miocene period anywhere in the world.
- The period from 8 to 5 million years ago, the best collections of terrestrial mammals can be found in the UAE.
- 93m long elephant tusk found, that is soon to go on display in the Zayed National Museumin Abu Dhabi.
- Palaeolithic, the process of the UAE acting as a pathway, as a passage point between Africa and Asia, it happened up to 120 thousand years ago.
- Other sites in Sharjah Emirate, where there is evidence of people 120 thousand years ago who had probably come out of Africa across the southern end of the Red Sea and stopped in the Emirates.
- Anatomically modern humans (Homo Sapiens) moved from the UAE into the Asian continent, and eventually all the way to Australia.
- Neolithic, a house on the Island of Marawah, west of Abu Dhabi.6 It was built 7500 years ago. There were sophisticated architectural methods being used in a way that is not found anywhere else in the Arabian Gulf at that period.
- A pot from Ubaid period Mesopotamia, 7500 years ago was found in the same building.
- Oldest known pearl to have been used and collected by man. It dates to about 5800 B.C. again from the Island of Marawah. The pearling industry in the UAE began 7500 years ago and ended just after the Second World War.
- There was innovation. This is another ‘first’ from the Emirates. Figure 9 shows a date stone from the Neolithic period, 7500 years ago, discovered in Dalma Island.
- A large communal burial area 200-300 skeletons from about 4500-4000 B.C., excavated by a German team in the Emirate of Sharjah.
- 3000 years ago, the invention of the Falaj system allowed you at the time of declining rain fall to tap into underground water. These are 3000 years old water channels that are still in use today.
- Camel skeletons found in the desert, which are dated to the Neolithic period. But about 3000 years ago it appears that camels were first domesticated in the UAE and surrounding areas.
- The Church from Sir Bani Yas Island, when we had an active Christian community in the UAE, before the beginning of Islam probably around 600 A.D. until about 750 A.D.
- Sir Bani Yas Nestorian monastery.
- Painting of the British shelling of Ras Al Khaimah in 1819, when the UAE first came within the political orbit of Britain in India.
There have been great ideas and innovations in the UAE’s history for thousands of years. There are things that have been invented in the UAE. Things that have been practised in the UAE. The international trade relationships in the UAE that has seen people trading between the UAE and China 2000 years ago. The Emirates do have a history that is fascinating and it goes back a long way.
