Amid Shifting Sands

The United Arab Emirates are renowned for their enormous production of oil and the rise of great cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which attract millions of tourists annually. It is as if the great aridity of the country did not exist. Yet the UAE is essentially a vast desert, thinly peopled for thousands of years by nomads, grazing sheep, camels and growing a few crops in great oases like Al Ain and Liwa. Early people used spears and falcons to hunt rich populations of oryx, gazelle, ibex, and t