How it began
Claudio Giardino's study of prehistoric Omani metallurgy places the earliest evidence of metalworking in Oman at the end of the Neolithic, in the 4th millennium BCE. Production grew through the Hafit period, about 3200 to 2800 BCE, and the Umm an-Nar period, about 2800 to 2000 BCE. Mesopotamian cuneiform texts called the country Magan, a land where copper was found in great abundance.
How it works
The ore came from copper deposits in the Semail ophiolite of the Omani mountains, where Bronze Age mines have been identified. Smelters reduced the ore in furnaces and let the molten waste run out, leaving tapped slag that still marks ancient sites. Giardino notes that the earliest copper melting found in Oman was already a developed technique. The metal was then cast and traded.
How it spread
In the 3rd millennium BCE copper from the Omani mountains was a major source for Mesopotamian metallurgy for several centuries. The trade tied Oman into a system linking Arabia with Syria, Iran, Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Sumerian texts of about 2300 BCE name Magan as a source of copper and diorite, and the first mentions fall in the Umm an-Nar period.
What changed first
Copper gave the scattered communities of the Oman Peninsula a product that the cities of the Near East needed. Giardino links the growth of a prehistoric civilization in Oman directly to its exploitation, and the society reached its peak in the second half of the 3rd millennium BCE, when trade with Mesopotamia brought the country into written history.
What lasted
The system collapsed around 2000 BCE, and the following Wadi Suq period, about 2000 to 1300 BCE, brought marked change. Mining and smelting continued in later ages, and slag heaps, mines and tombs remain in the landscape. The record of Magan is the main evidence that southeastern Arabia was an early industrial supplier to the first cities.
