Settlers in ancient Abu Dhabi forced to abandon island home due to climate change, archaeologists reveal

Second group of Neolithic people later began using the site on Ghagha Island to support fishing

The site on Ghagha Island, which archaeologists have recently excavated. Photo: Plos One

Excavations on an Abu Dhabi island have revealed that Neolithic people were forced to abandon a cluster of stone buildings when the environment turned arid more than 8,000 years ago – only for the site to be reoccupied centuries later to support fishing activities.

The work on Ghagha Island off the far west coast of the UAE also revealed unexpected cultural links between the emirate’s Neolithic island communities.

Dr Kevin Lidour, a research archaeologist in the Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT), said that when the site was discovered as a mound in November 2023, expectations of what it might contain were not high.

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“At that time the site was not expected to be really substantial; it was just a low mound visible on the landscape of the island. Obviously human made,” Dr Lidour said. “We were not expecting necessarily to have a very ancient site at the beginning.”

New insight into the past

Named GHG0088, the site was excavated by three archaeologists and two assistants over a three-week period early last year. The findings have recently been published in PLOS One, a peer-reviewed academic journal.

Despite appearing modest, it has, Dr Lidour said, “significantly refined our understanding of the early Neolithic period in the Arabian Gulf, particularly in the UAE”.

Dating back 8,400 years, it has the second set of stone-built structures discovered on Ghagha Island, highlighting the importance of Abu Dhabi’s islands as Neolithic settlements.

The island’s first-described set of stone buildings, at the neighbouring site of GHG0014, revealed by the DCT in 2022, are thought to be houses and, being 8,500 years old, are the Gulf region’s earliest known stone architecture.

“Both sites point to year-round habitation by fishing communities who used stone and shell tools but also produced plaster vessels – a distinctive cultural feature of Abu Dhabi’s Neolithic period,” Dr Lidour said.

What makes the more recently excavated GHG0088 site particularly noteworthy, Dr Lidour said, is a human grave located within a smaller chamber. This mirrors burial practices on Marawah Island, which lies further east off the Abu Dhabi coast, indicating cultural continuity between Abu Dhabi’s islands during the Neolithic period.

The newly revealed site on Ghagha Island showed evidence of several phases of occupation, something not seen at other locations, allowing archaeologists to build up a detailed picture of how Neolithic life evolved.

Also known as the New Stone Age, the Neolithic lasted from about 6500 BC to 3300 BC in the UAE and surrounding areas and, in other locations, saw the development of farming and herding as a settled lifestyle developed.

The people who created the stone buildings at GHG0088 and lived there first were a fishing community with a sedentary lifestyle and there is evidence of wider domestic activity on the site. Possibly only a single family lived at the site.

Both sites point to year-round habitation by fishing communities. Photo: Daniel Bardsley / The National

Winds of change

Early in the Neolithic, about 8,200 years ago, a severe cooling episode in the Northern Hemisphere caused various changes to weather patterns and ecosystems in other areas, including on Ghagha Island.

Strong winds brought large amounts of sand into the stone structure, Dr Lidour said, there was less rainfall, and fewer plants and animals were available to eat.

One of the study’s authors, Dr Remy Crassard, of the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), said that the changes were reflected in the archaeological record, with thick sand deposits separating the two Neolithic phases of occupation, possibly indicating desertification.

“It’s likely that changing coastal conditions – perhaps a drop in sea level or the desiccation of nearby lagoons – made the site temporarily uninhabitable,” he said.

“The abandonment lasted roughly 300 to 400 years. When people returned, the environment had shifted, and so had their way of life.”

Beginning at around 5800 BC to 5400 BC, the second phase of occupation involved people living on top of a sand and stone mound formed from the collapse of the previous buildings, some stones from which were used to consolidate the mound.

The people did not build stone walls, but probably used a mix of stone and plant fibres to create structures resembling the barasti or arish-style palm frond constructions traditional to the Gulf region. Communities from the same period on Marawah Island built more elaborate structures.

During this second phase of occupation, communities lived from fishing, Dr Lidour said, with the site seemingly used as a “logistic” station to support this.

“Maritime culture flourished, with marine shells used for adornment and items exchanged over long distances,” he added.

Among the items exchanged were shells used as beads, including those from a species called Engina mendicaria, which is not found in the Arabian Gulf and instead lives in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea at least 500km away.

“In prehistoric times, human populations were already highly mobile, particularly hunter-gatherer groups,” Dr Lidour said. “Interactions between groups targeting similar resources were likely frequent, providing opportunities for various exchanges, including objects of prestige.

“These items could have held intrinsic or social value, reflecting the complex trade networks and cultural interactions.”

Shells were collected from the shore and knapped – struck so that a piece breaks off to leave a sharp edge – and used for purposes such as cleaning animal skins, cutting plant fibres and preparing fish, which had probably been speared in shallow waters around the island.

The artefacts on Ghagha Island from the second occupation have similarities to those from Marawah Island from the same time, Dr Lidour said, so by the sixth millennium BC “a unified regional Neolithic culture” had emerged locally. As well as shells, stone arrowheads were discovered.

In the 15th century, about 7,000 years after the second phase of occupation of GHG0088 ended, a third phase began during what is termed the Middle Islamic period. This probably involved another fishing community and was probably “very brief”, similar to the second phase of occupation, Dr Lidour said.

“A community of fishermen appears to have reoccupied the site and its surroundings,” he added. “We have scatters of shells and Islamic pottery all across the coastal plateau. It was likely a single or multi-event, [possibly] seasonal occupation, focused on fishing and collecting sea snails.”

These people may have been the ancestors of traditional tribes of the coastal Al Dhafra region, which forms the western part of Abu Dhabi emirate. There were probably, Dr Lidour said, only several visits over a few years during the 15th century.

With excavation work at GHG0088 concluded, the site has been “backfilled” to protect it, said another of the paper’s authors, Noura Hamad Al Hameli, head of DCT’s archaeological research unit for Al Dhafra and Abu Dhabi.

Archaeologists have excavated another Ghagha Island site, GHG0063, which although it did not have stone buildings, contained artefacts similar to those found elsewhere on the island. Details of this site are set to be revealed soon.

The latest results add to previously discovered archaeological finds in Abu Dhabi emirate, including 300,000-year-old stone tools from the Jebel Hafit area, an ancient monastery on Sir Bani Yas Island, a 3,000-year-old falaj irrigation system in Al Ain and, from about the same time and also in Al Ain, a fortress.