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<< News >> Human activity in Abu Dhabi dates back to Old Stone Age

Submitted by coldrum on Sunday, 22 July 2007  Page Views: 3258

DiscoveriesCountry: United Arab Emirates Archaeological discovery includes stone artefacts of Levallois technique in Palaeolithic Period.

An important discovery of archaeological finds from the Palaeolithic Period in Abu Dhabi was announced by Mohamed Khalaf Al-Mazrouei, Director General of Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage.

The finds were identified by a team from the Authority and two visiting scholars.

The discovery included stone artefacts of Levallois technique, an industry that was known during the Old Stone Age.

Due to the importance of this discovery, the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage is participating in the Seminar for Arabian Studies, to be held at the British Museum between the 19th and 20th of this month where the discovery will be discussed with international scholars. Several papers dealing with the Palaeolithic of Arabia will be presented at the seminar.

Dr. Walid Yasin, Manager of the Archaeology Division at ADACH picked up the first distinctive artefact from one of the ancient sites in the Western Province of Abu Dhabi.

He reported that a number of flint cores and flakes of Levallois technique were collected from the site. Artefacts of this manufacturing technique were first discovered in the nineteenth century at the archaeological site of Levallios, near Paris.

Today, similar artefacts are known from Europe, Africa and Asia. In the Near East they are usually associated with Neanderthal man.

The dating of Abu Dhabi artefacts according to Dr. Ghanim Wahida, a pre-historian, specialized in this period from Cambridge University, UK, is however estimated to fall in the Middle Palaeolithic (150000-35000 years ago).

The significance of this major discovery “lies in the fact that it alters our understanding of the beginning of first human activities in Abu Dhabi which seem to go back to the Old Stone Age, as opposed to the New Stone Age some 7500 years ago”, said Yasin.

It should be also noted that the Western Province of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi revealed fossils of mammals from the Late Miocene date (6-8 million years ago), together with evidence of an ancient river, which indicate prevailing a wet climate.

middle-east-online.
Contributor Bio for coldrum: Based in Milkyway, contributing since 2002. Favourite site: Avebury.

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"Human activity in Abu Dhabi dates back to Old Stone Age" | Login/Create an Account | 3 News and Comments
  
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New archaeological discoveries at Al Shuaib by coldrum on Wednesday, 17 June 2009
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New archaeological discoveries at Al Shuaib

ADACH archaeological team discover some artefacts that date back to Late Stone Age.



ABU DHABI – The Historic Environment Department of the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) has recently carried out surveys and excavations in different parts in Abu Dhabi during which the archaeological team unearthed priceless archaeological findings at sites in Al Shuaib.

Among these findings were a pair of silver earrings, two bronze coins, a small ring, stone equipments used as hammers, and pieces of stoves that may have been used for cooking beside which animal fossils were found. Fractures of potteries were identified, after being collected from sites surveyed, as well as granite fragments, which probably mark attempts to carve granite pieces during Late Stone Age, casting shadows over the possibility of the existence of Late Stone Age sites at this period, perhaps buried beneath the sand or near it.

The archaeological team carried on its surveys and excavations last February at Al Ain, along the Al Ain to Dubai highway, where the team undertook data collection and recording of archaeological sites all over the valleys and dunes in that area, as a preliminary step for listing all these sites in a single database at ADACH.

Fossils of ostrich eggshells were among the discoveries. After comparing surveyed pottery fractures with other similar pottery fractures, experts found out that the former group dates back to the Late Islamic epoch. These fractures belong to tribes used to cut through many areas throughout ancient UAE during the winter searching for food and water. They used to pitch their tents only for a very short period of time at different sites, which were found similar to others surveyed previously by ADACH’s team in past years, like Mahdar Al Meri, Bedou’ Al Shuaiber located in the south of Al Khatm area, and other parts at Al Khazna, Bukheesa forests, and many others previously documented in preliminary surveys at several areas in Abu Dhabi.

Sticking firmly to its mission in safeguarding national cultural heritage, and engaging civil society in its activities within Abu Dhabi, the Historic Environment Department started recently to communicate and interact with the public, covering various activities with special focus on culture and heritage.

Abu Dhabi citizens played a vitally distinguished role in reporting several sites in the desert, which sites were unearthed, then registered as new ADACH archaeological areas. UAE citizens were also actively helpful in handing over several ancient pieces they found to ADACH.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/culture/?id=32586
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In the Mangrove, a one-stop shop by coldrum on Wednesday, 21 May 2008
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In the Mangrove, a one-stop shop

The nation’s fragile and ecologically rich mangrove forests have been under pressure from human exploitation for a lot longer than many people think.

Most have heard the warnings from environmentalists that the multibillion-dirham developments along our coastline are causing damage to the warm, shallow mangrove flats that act as nurseries for fish and other wildlife but archaeology experts will tell you that vast areas of mangrove forests were felled by the country’s earliest inhabitants thousands of years ago, perhaps wiping out an entire species.

“We have this idea of the past as an idyllic time when people lived in complete harmony with nature,” said Dr Mark Beech, the head of the cultural landscapes division at the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage. “But the truth is that humans have been affecting the environment for as long as they have been on earth.”

Mangroves cover about 50 square kilometres of the country. However, fossilised charcoal and animal remains discovered by archaeologists show that mangrove species were once more diverse and spread across a larger area.

The exact area covered by mangroves in the past is not known, said Dr Beech. “All we can say is that there are areas where there were mangroves in the past where there are none now,” he said. “People exploited the mangrove forests and we know that from archaeological remains.”

Thousands of years before the coming of the waterfront villas, hotels and marinas being developed today, large areas of forest were cleared to provide material for houses, boats and even household items. “In prehistoric times, people made many more things from wood,” said Dr Beech.

The trees were also used as firewood. The need for fuel intensified with the Bronze Age, which began around 3,200BC, when people started smelting tin and copper ores to cast bronze – and, said Dr Beech, “people needed an awful lot of wood for fuel”. What is today the UAE and Oman was then an area occupied by people actively involved in metal work. A large proportion of the bronze produced was traded with Mesopotamia, one of the most advanced civilisations at the time, which required large quantities of the metal.

The proof that thousands of years ago such activities occurred here, and that mangrove wood was essential for the smelting fires, can be found in fossilised charcoal remains in Ed-Dur, Umm al Qaiwain and Tell Abraq, on the border of Umm al Qaiwain and Sharjah. The remains, said Dr Beech, told the story of people long gone and an ecosystem that had vanished.

The sole mangrove species now growing naturally in the UAE is Avicennia marina, popularly known as the grey mangrove. However, the ancient charcoal remains suggest that the mangrove forest once hosted at least one other swamp tree species that scientists have identified as Rhizophora or Bruguiera.

“According to our data, the Rhizophoraceae [family] would have disappeared from the Arabian Gulf sometime between the first centuries of our era and the present,” Dr Margareta Tengberg, a lecturer in archaeobotany who has participated in archaeological excavations in Egypt, Pakistan, Bahrain, the UAE, Syria, France and Denmark, wrote in one paper.

“In fact a progressive decrease of the relative frequency of the Rhizophoraceae is already noticeable in the charcoal record of Tell Abraq,”

The decline happened over hundreds of years. Dr Tengberg wrote that while Rhizophoraceae represented almost 60 per cent of identified species for the period between 2,500BC and 1,300BC, its presence shrank to only 25 per cent during the Iron Age, from about 1,300BC to 400BC.

Dr Beech said that this gradual decline suggested human exploitation to a point when the species become extinct. And there was a good reason why the ancient people preferred Rhizophoraceae to the grey mangrove. The former, he said, made better boats and also burnt more effectively.

But besides human exploitation, nature could have played a part in Rhizophoraceae’s disappearance. The Arabian Gulf waters, said Dr Beech, were less saline in the past. The salinity increased gradually and this affected the marine environment and species including the mangrove forests. The genus Avicennia grows so well because it has a high tolerance of saline water. Rhizophoraceae trees, on the other hand, were more sensitive to high salinity and, ultimately, were unable to cope.

Even though Avicennia was able to survive, its range has been greatly reduced. Mangrove forests are smaller compared with those of ancient times. Apart from charcoal remains, scientists have also discovered the fossilised claws of a swimming crab in areas that are now desert. The claws, said Dr Beech, preserved very well and many of them were discovered at various archaeological sites in the country, including in Iron Age deposits at Rafaq in Wadi al Qawr, 20km away from Kalba, and also in Kush in Ras al Khaimah.

The fossil has been identified as Scylla serrata, which today is widespread in the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. The creature, said Dr Beech, was the largest of the swimming crabs which lived in mangrove forests and reached a weight of up to 2kg.

Until recently, when one specimen was observed in the northernmost tip of Ras al Khaimah, in a mangrove lagoon near the Police Club, naturalists thought the crab was missing from the Gulf. The archaeological evidence suggests that the crab was more common in the past, so much so that it was a staple of the local diet.

http://www.thenational.ae/article/20080513/FRONTIERS/848672718/1036
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ADACH announces new archaeological discovery in Abu Dhabi by coldrum on Tuesday, 20 May 2008
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ADACH announces new archaeological discovery in Abu Dhabi

UAE. Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (ADACH) has revealed ِan important discovery of archaeological materials from the Palaeolithic Period in Abu Dhabi Emirate.

''The artefacts were found by a team from the Department of Historic Environment. The discovery included a good number of new stone artefacts of the Levallois, a stone reduction technique that was known during the Old Stone Age,HE Mohamed Khalaf Al-Mazrouei, Director General of ADACH announced.

One of the several functions of this type of tools, he explained, was to split animal bones to extract the marrow which was a nutritious food resource. It is worth mentioning here that this period had proceeded the food production era, based on agriculture and the domestication of animals in the Near East by tens of thousands of years.

Dr Ghanim Wahida, a specialist in Stone Age archaeology, was invited by ADACH to study and evaluate the artefacts, said that the discovered assemblage belongs to techno -typologically to the Middle Stone Age Period, well over 150000 thousands years ago.

''Among the implements a distinctive artefact in the form of a handaxe of the Middle Stone Age has been discovered in Abu Dhabi Emirate for the first time this season. The hand axe, an all purpose tool, was made by a technique known as direct percussion, using in this case a soft hammer,'' he added.

Dr Walid Yasin, Manager of the Archaeology Division at ADACH, who had discovered these two sites and picked up a number of distinctive artefacts, including the above-mentioned handaxe, said the Levallios technique was first discovered in the nineteenth century at the archaeological site of Levallios, near Paris.

''Today, similar artefacts are known from Europe, Africa and Asia. In the Near East they are usually associated with Neanderthal man. The significance of this major discovery ?lies in the fact that it alters our understanding of the beginning of the first human activities in Abu Dhabi Emirate which seem to have gone back well into the Old Stone Age.

''This important discovery does contradict an earlier claim made by archaeologists during the late twentieth century that the earliest occupation of the Arabian Gulf was during the New Stone Age, some 7,500 years ago. This discovery complements an earlier finds made last year at the same area,'' Yasin added.

ADACH said the importance of last year discovery was presented to the world of prehistoric archaeology by the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage at the Seminar for Arabian Studies, held at the British Museum last Summer. Results of the new discovery were to be published as a chapter in a book dedicated to the evolution and history of human population in Arabia, before the end of this year.

http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?id=17467&t=1&c=33&cg=4
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