Step 1 : Introduction to the question "6. What discovery in the early 1960s was the impetus for unification of the Emirates?"
...1. Oil 2. Diamonds 3. Gold 4. Plutonium Prior to the discovery of oil, one of the primary exports of the region had been pearls, an industry that had sustained the sheikhs for millennia. The advent of World War I and the development by the Japanese of cultured pearls all but destroyed the industry. Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan (1918-2004) became the ruler of Abu Dhabi in 1966 and was the driving force behind the unification of the emirates. With oil interests being lost to U.S. companies, the answer to that problem lay in unifying their interests and protecting their own resources from foreign control. The new constitution was put in place in 1971, forming the UAE from the former 'Trucial States.'
