Early Settlement & Pearl Divers

The region of today's UAE has been inhabited for at least 125,000 years — stone tools from Jebel Faya in Sharjah are among the oldest artifacts outside Africa and could prove that modern humans migrated out of Africa earlier than previously thought.

In the Bronze Age (3000–1300 BC), the Umm-al-Nar culture flourished in the region around Al Ain — trade relations extended to Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. The characteristic round tombs are now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

From the 7th century AD, the region was Islamized. For the next 1,200 years, the coastal inhabitants primarily lived off pearl diving — the pearl banks of the Persian Gulf were legendary and supplied the courts from Baghdad to Paris with the most coveted pearls in the world. The life of the pearl divers was brutal: They dived up to 40 meters deep, without equipment, only with a nose clip and a rope weighted with stones. The season lasted from June to September in scorching heat. Many divers became deaf, blind, or died.

In the 1930s, the pearl industry collapsed: The invention of the cultured pearl by the Japanese Mikimoto (1893) and the Great Depression made natural pearls unprofitable. The region sank into bitter poverty.