Archaeologists may have finally identified an ancient lost city famous for its pearls.
Researchers working on Siniya Island, off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have discovered a complex of ancient residential buildings that are believed to have once formed part of the city of Tuam, the Umm Al Quwain Tourism and Antiquities Authority announced.
The settlement is recorded in historical sources but has never been positively identified. Previously, researchers had suspected that Tuam was located elsewhere in the UAE, but the latest findings on Siniyah Island suggest this is not the case.
Michele degli Esposti, head of the Italian archaeological mission at Umm al-Quwain and a researcher at the Polish Academy of Sciences, told the local newspaper: National He said the latest findings “will reverberate throughout the region.”
“I’m really excited about it,” he said, “and it’s also a really, really, really promising place.”
Tuam’s history dates back to at least the 4th century and is thought to have reached its height in the 6th century, when the city was highly renowned and is mentioned in ancient documents.
Scholars believe the city was once the capital of a region on the coast of what is now the United Arab Emirates, and was a famous pearl fishing center known for the high quality of its pearls.
However, the city is thought to have declined mainly due to regional tensions and the bubonic plague epidemics that devastated the Near East, the Mediterranean region, and other parts of Europe in the 6th century.
The city eventually faded from memory, but the recent discovery of a cluster of ancient houses on the island of Siniya may provide evidence of the lost settlement.
In recent years, archaeologists have discovered a pearl fishing village and a Christian monastery in the same part of the island, but this latest discovery makes it clear that there’s something much more to the area.
“Our archaeological survey has uncovered the largest settlement ever discovered on the UAE’s Gulf coast,” said Tim Power from the United Arab Emirates University. National.
“And it fits right in with the date of the city described in early Islamic geographical sources,” he said. “It’s obviously a very important site. No one has discovered it yet.”
The settlement on Siniya seems to have attracted Christian monks, who founded a monastery there sometime between the late 6th and early 7th century. Tuam is thought to have been a Christian settlement for around 200 years before Islam spread to the area.
Experts say the latest finds are yet to conclusively point to the lost city of Tuam, but no other major settlements from that period have been identified on the coast to date, supporting the idea that Tuam has been found.
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