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 The island of Umm al-Nar, adjacent to Abu Dhabi island, has given its name to one of the major periods in the history of southeastern Arabia, the Umm al-Nar period, which lasted from around 2700 BC to 2000 BC.
Archaeology in the United Arab Emirates began here, with excavations in 1959 by a Danish team identifying over 50 large stone-built collective graves and a settlement from where smelted copper was exported to the empires of Mesopotamia.
Evidence of the Umm al-Nar civilisation has subsequently been discovered throughout the UAE and northern Oman. There is also evidence of occupation during the Late Islamic period. Umm al-Nar is a typical small inshore island, with low-lying coastal areas surrounding a raised limestone hill, on which the graves are located.
Examination of bird bones from the settlement has identified three species no longer found in the UAE, the giant heron (Ardea bennuides), now extinct, and known only from this site, Bruce's green pigeon, (Treron aff. waalia) and the darter (Anhinga melanogaster), the last two now known only from, respectively from the woodlands of Dhofar and the marshes of Mesopotamia. Since the late 1970s, Umm al-Nar has been the site of the UAE's first oil refinery, which refines crude from the onshore fields of the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations, ADCO, for local consumption. Associated with the refinery is a chlorine plant, while there is also a major water desalination and power generation complex on the island. The archaeological sites, however, are carefully protected and preserved.
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