The southern coast of Iran is known today as Makran. It has been suggested that this name preserves the name of the civilization named Magan. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the name comes from a tribe known to the Greeks as Ichthyophagi and to the Persians as māhī khorān, and that this is the source of the name Makran. Both the Persian and Greek terms carry the same meaning of “fish-eater,” this being the primary diet of those who lived on this desolate coastline.

According to Arrian’s account of Alexander’s conquests, the Ichthyophagi inhabited a vast stretch of coastline between India and Arabia. Upon his return voyage from India by sea, Nearchus, one of Alexander’s generals, recounted an encounter he had with six hundred of the Ichthyophagi who gathered on the coast to oppose him. Clothed in animal skins and armed with nothing more than a sharpened stick, they were easily scattered with arrows and a small contingent of lightly armed swimmers. Arrian says that they were a very primitive people who did not use boats or hooks to catch fish, but netted them in tidal pools. The small, tenderer fish were eaten raw while the bigger ones were dried and pounded into flour.¹Arrian, Indika, XIV & XIX.

The “Fish-Eaters” of the Early Bronze Age

Judging by the quantity of fish bones found by the Danish expedition in the settlement at Umm an-Nar, the people who lived on the island must also have been “fish-eaters,” although by no means primitive. We have already seen the elaborate tombs and pottery of the Umm an-Nar culture, and their smelting operation in the Wadi el-Hilo. Judging by references to them in Akkadian texts, the Magan people were skilled sea-farers who regularly sailed between the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia.

Fish bones are not usually recovered during excavations without specially sieving. Some recent studies from Qala’at al-Bahrain and Kalb-4, on the southern coastline of the Oman peninsula (although still in the UAE) have shed some light on the types of fish consumed. Approximately seventy percent of the fish bones recovered from Qal’at al-Bahrain were reef species, especially grouper (Apinephelus), emperor (Lethrinus) and sea bream (Sparidae). Open water fish such as tuna, mackerel, and trevally are also represented, howbeit in lesser numbers.²Hojlund 2021, 451

Reef fish could be caught in traps, nets, or with a hook and line without venturing out to sea. Open water species do not usually come inshore although large trevally (Carangidae) are known to frequent mangroves during high tide.³Lidour et al. 2023, 13 These large species were more likely caught from boats in the open water. Considerable skill must have been required to land even a small tuna or mackerel using fishing line made from plant fiber and a barbless, bronze hook, without rod or reel! Presumably the larger fish were speared with a harpoon.

It is interesting to note that a significant quantity of dugong (“sea cow”) bones were found in the settlement at Umm an-Nar. Bones of the dugon were also found at Kalb-4. These creatures live in the sheltered bays of the Persian Gulf, amid mangroves and beds of seagrass. None are known to live in the neighborhood of Kalb-4 today, but they must have in prior ages. Although rarely seen, Geoffrey Bibby wondered if the dugong may not have once lined the shores of the Persian Gulf like seals in the Arctic!

Stone Age People in the Bronze Age

While Nearchus voyaged in ships along the southern coast of Iran, Alexander travelled overland along the same coast. He was met with Oreitae and Arabitae, unfriendly tribes who put up a token resistance before making peace. One of Alexander’s scouts, Thoas, reported seeing fishermen living along the coast.

Thoas reported that he had found some fishermen dwelling in cramped huts at the shore; that the huts had been built of cockle shells fitted together, and roofed with fish spines; and that the little water the men used was obtained with difficulty by scraping away the shingle [gravel], and even then it was not always fresh.⁴Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, 6.23.3 in Romm 2012, 259

These are the Ichthyophagoi mentioned previously. Their living conditions present a marked contrast to the opulent luxury of the Indians or the prosperous villages of the Gedrosians. In an age of iron, the Ichthyophagoi were armed with sticks whose sharpened end was hardened in fire.

The Ichthyophagoi were an oddity to the Greeks and Romans who may perhaps have been inclined to exaggerated the primitive conditions in which they lived. Even so, the presence of these people on the coast of Makran illustrates the possibility for neighboring peoples to maintain a very different material culture.

A similar dynamic has been observed in Siberia where people living in the early centuries of the Christian era nevertheless maintained a way of life which resembled “true neolithic cultures.” Thus the Soviet era scholar, A. L. Mongait, writes with regards to the uneven technological development observed across the vast regions of the former USSR.

Mongait goes on to describe the Uellen, a people who may be considered the true predecessors of the Eskimo’s, who used bows and arrows tipped with flint, sophisticated harpoons, and canoes made of animal skins. Their culture passed through many phases before they finally adopted iron tools, sometime in the Christian era.