For many years archeology in the Gulf focussed more on site rich Bahrain than on poverty stricken Qatar. At the time most locals had to think about the struggle to survive, whether in the desert as nomads (Bedouin were still travelling until the 1970's) or as pearl divers eking out a living from the sea - a stark contrast to the wealth that current day Qataris possess.

It was Ron Cochrane, the Muslim-British head of the Qatari police force in Qatar, who changed this. In the 1950's he invited archeologists on an expedition to Bahrain to come to Qatar. No sooner had they done so that discoveries started to be made.

Finds made since then have shown that habitation in Qatar stretches back thousands of years, with the oldest habitation found - a fisherman's hut - being dated to 6000 BC. Another important discovery was the discovery of a site used to curch sea snails on an island in the bay of Al Khor, dating back to the Kassite period in 2000 BC. These snails were used to produce the royal die, purple, that was used in the Royal court of Babylon.

Archeologists all over the world were recently excited by claims by a local and amateur archeologist that Qatar had been settled by traders from the Indus valley, and that the Romans had settlements in Fuwarit, Jessasiya and Umm Almah in Qatar. Unfortunately, and to the fury of other archeologists, the claims hadn't been investigated properly by the local newspapers and were totally untrue.