3400 BC to 330 BC

Oasis kingdoms

Rock art at sites such as Jubbah records hunters and herders from thousands of years ago. On the Gulf coast, Tarut island trades with Dilmun and Mesopotamia in the third millennium BC. Oasis towns grow along the incense road in the west: Dedan near AlUla, and Tayma, where the Babylonian king Nabonidus lives for about ten years in the sixth century BC.