Archaeological excavations near Abu Dhabi International Airport (United Arab Emirates) have yielded new information on human habitation at the site during the Late Stone Age or Neolithic period 8,000 to 5,000 years ago. According to Dr Heiko Kallweit of the University of Freiburg, Germany, and Field Director of Abu Dhabi Islands Archaeological Survey (ADIAS), several hundred archaeological finds, including pieces of flint and fragments of pottery, were collected during the two-week fieldwork on the site. The pottery dates back to the early Bronze Age, while the flint materials belong to the Late Stone Age or Neolithic period.
      "Our first season of fieldwork on the site, in the summer of 1996, revealed the significance of the area. We knew it had been inhabited during four periods, the Late Stone Age or Arabian Neolithic, then two periods in the Bronze Age, the Hafit period, around 3000 BC, and the Umm Al Nar period, from around 2500 BCE to 2000 BC, and finally around 2,000 years ago," Dr Kallweit said. He added the second major discovery was a number of stone tools known as "micro-liths", probably used to form the blades of sickles used for cutting wild grasses or possibly crops. "Such microliths have never previously been discovered in the emirates, though they were found elsewhere in the peninsula such as western Saudi Arabia near the Red Sea coast."

Source: Gulf News (6 January 2003 http://www.gulf-news.com)