Earliest human occupation in the UAE is recorded as far back as 5500 BC or 7500 years ago, although new evidence suggests that the first human inhabitants could have arrived here much earlier during the Early Stone Age.
Collective burials were noted during 3000-2500 BC on the lower slopes of Jebel Hafit (also spelled Hafeet) in Abu Dhabi, while the existence of first oasis towns as well as communal tombs were noted in the Northern Emirates in the succeeding 500 years. The domestication of the camel somewhere around the second millennium facilitated trade, primarily copper from the Hajar Mountain, with the southern cities of Iraq and Syria.
Discovery of an irrigation technology called falaj highlighted the Iron Age, somewhere between 1300 and 300 BC. This technique entails subterranean galleries which led water from mountain aquifers to lower-lying oases and gardens, encouraging the formation of settlements. Other significant developments during this ancient era are the first use of iron, first writing using south Arabian alphabet, and initial contacts with Assyrian and Persian empires.
Production of local coinage did not commence until around 300 BC, along with evidence of trade imports from Greece and South Arabia. The first use of horse by inhabitants was also recorded around this time.
The succeeding centuries saw flourishing settlements and strong trade network extending throughout the Mediterranean, Syria, Iraq and India. A ruler called Abiél also encouraged the mass production of coinage, and it is around this time that the first use of Aramaic inscription was discovered from ed-Dur and Mleiha.
The year 630 AD marked the arrival of envoys from the Prophet Muhammad heralding the conversion of people to Islam.
Such was the status quo until the Portuguese arrived in the Gulf in the sixteenth century, stirring fierce rivalry between them and the Ottoman. The arrival of the Portuguese likewise coincided with the strengthening of the Qawasim, a group of sheikhs and their sheikhdoms that built an economic powerhouse and used military force to resist foreign control of trade. Such resistance eventually provoked a British offensive which quelled the Qawasim around the second half of the 1700s.
An important cluster of villages at Liwa, comprising the Bani Yas clan, was thriving even before the onset of this turbulent era. The “boom” that was being experienced by the pearling industry particularly in the area which is today known as Abu Dhabi city attracted the Bani Yas clan, led by the Sheikh of Al Bu Falah (Al Nahyan family), to migrate to Abu Dhabi from Liwa. Part of this clan, called Al Bu Fasalah, later decided to settle by the creek in today’s Dubai and establish the Maktoum rule.
The defeat of the Qawasim led the British to sign individual treaties with each of the emirates in the early 1800s, which eventually included a maritime truce, hence, the initial name Trucial States.