ough the Neolithic is generally associated with stable settlement and husbandry, the Neolithic in the United Arab Emirates appears to have been characterised by a mix of settled and nomadic and/or semi-nomadic lifestyles, a pattern which persists until the modern era. Coastal occupation in the winter and pastoralism and horticulture in the interior would have been common throughout. The domestication of sheep, cattle and goats is evidenced from 5,000 BCE onwards, with evidence of extensive consumption of fish (including dugong and turtle) and the use of stone sinkers at Gagha pointing to the use of small nets as early as 6,500 BCE. The late Neolithic also was a time of regional trade and the emergence of tool production centres, as well as the making of soft stone objects out of chlorite and schist. More sophisticated tool use included novel explorations in methods of fishing, where open sea fishing for species such as tuna was first observed. The archaeological record shows that the late Neolithic Arabian Bifacial/Ubaid period came to an abrupt end in eastern Arabia and the Oman peninsula at the end of the fourth millennium BCE, just after a phase of lake lowering and onset of dune reactivation, which saw the abandonment of the area to the west of the Hajar Mountains, from 4,000-3,200 BCE, a period in the history of the Emirates known as the 'Dark Millenn