Kind: captions
Language: en
foreign
cities of the ancient world
Petra
its Monumental temple-like tombs soar
over a hundred feet tall
and these wonders of engineering are not
constructed they're carved out of
sandstone Cliffs
at its height Petra was the center of a
vast trading Network in frankincense and
myrrh and home to over thirty thousand
people in one of the most bone dry
deserts on Earth
it's not an appropriate location for
Rosetti there is not even drinking water
down there how did an ancient people
supply enough water for this vast City
and how did they carve these magnificent
structures so high up in these Cliffs
[Music]
to find out a geoscientist teams up with
stonemasons to carve a petra-style tomb
we're looking at something that hasn't
been witnessed for almost 2 000 years
an archaeologist and hydro Engineers
discover how a group of Nomads
transformed this desert city into an
oasis the Las Vegas of the ancient world
it's really conspicuous consumption of
this precious resource water in this
desert environment
finally after 2 000 years the secrets of
Petra are about to be reveal
up now on Nova Petra lost city of stone
[Music]
thank you
it's one of the driest places on Earth
yet concealed among the Canyons of this
harsh desert in the Kingdom of Jordan is
a magnificent ancient city
[Music]
Petra
[Music]
for over a thousand years its location
remained hidden
protected by fortress-like Cliffs
and Bedouin tribes who fiercely guarded
its Secret
then in 1812 a Swiss Adventurer
disguised as an Arab Pilgrim risks his
life to search for the legendary City
Johann Ludwig Burkhart makes his way
through the Sikh a dramatic Canyon
Rising almost 600 feet that twists and
turns for nearly a mile
near its end the canyon widens to reveal
a towering temple-like facade
it is called the treasury or kazne in
Arabic
two thousand years ago it is a
masterpiece of design and engineering
Majestic columns Rise From the Canyon
floor
topped by ornately carved capitals
of mythological figures Adorn its facade
a fanciful urn raises its roof
and a towering doorway leads inside to a
room with three chambers
here there is no elaborate carving just
the simple natural beauty of the stone
and then we back away and we realize not
only is this building unique and
fantastic but
arved into the to the sheer face of
living Rock
the treasury is actually a sculpture on
a Monumental scale
at 80 feet wide and 127 feet tall
it is twice the height of the Mount
Rushmore Memorial
[Music]
as Burkhart continues through the canyon
he discovers hundreds of magnificently
carved facades everywhere
many rivaling the Grandeur of Egypt
Greece and Rome
but there is more
the ruins of an entire city
this thousand seat theater carved right
out of the sandstone
a Main Street lined with huge
temple-like structures
[Music]
or spectacular spectacular monuments
carved higher in the mountains
but burkhart's rediscovery of the
legendary City Sparks more questions
than answers
who built Petra and why
Burkhart was inspired by stories of a
mysterious desert tribe who gained their
wealth trading spices and silks among
China India Egypt and Rome and then hid
their Treasures of gold in the cliffs
Greek and Roman sources provide a name
for these people
the nabatians
an account from the 4th Century BCE
describes the nabatians as nomadic tent
dwellers
but three centuries later another source
describes them as a sophisticated people
inhabiting a prosperous City
[Music]
around the time of Jesus nabatia is a
thriving Kingdom surrounded by Egypt
Judea and the vast North Arabian Desert
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in just a few centuries did a village of
tents
become a wealthy Kingdom
and how in the middle of a desert did
they build Petra
[Music]
Tom Paradise has spent over three
decades trying to find out
geoscientist who specializes in
preserving ancient structures
alongside the treasury he sees strange
Square marks that could be a clue to how
it was built
are these marks the remnants of where an
ancient scaffold was anchored to The
Cliff face for many years people
considered these to be holds for wooden
scaffolding that may have been used for
the actual carving but Paradise has
doubts if these are scaffolding marks
why did the nabataeans leave them here
and why are they found nowhere else in
Petra
[Music]
Paradise believes the real reason for
the marks may be tied to the fanciful
name given to this Monument centuries
ago
this building is called the khazane it
is the treasury
and so a legend goes back Millennia that
this housed riches
because it is known as the treasury
people have searched it for treasure
bullet holes riddle the urn at the top
and these marks may be footholds to
climb up and get a closer look we think
made those footholds were carved for the
purpose of raiding the upper parts of
the Cosner looking for the treasure
but the urn holds no gold it's Solid
Rock
the only Treasures here are the
Magnificent sculptures
whatever the true purpose of these marks
Paradise is certain they're not for
scaffolding
after all in this desert wood is
relatively scarce
so how on Earth could the ancient
nabataeans carve such a huge Monument so
high up in the Cliff face without
scaffolding
Paradise has a bold plan to find out
and go all the way down to the top
working with a team of stonemasons they
will try to carve a nabatan style facade
for the first time in 2000 years I may
be sitting on the answer to the age-old
question as to how were these facades
carved at the same time archaeologists
and hydro Engineers are investigating
how the nabataeans could even survive in
this bone dry environment the entire
hydraulic infrastructure was built as I
think I may prove following one master
plan their groundbreaking discoveries
are revealing the engineers of Petra
were not only masters of stone but also
of water
transforming a desert city into the Las
Vegas of the ancient world
[Music]
scientists find
our how a nomadic tribe built this city
of stone
and why Petra ultimately vanished into
Legend
most people will recognize the treasury
from the climactic scene of Indiana
Jones in the Last Crusade where Harrison
Ford and Sean Connery enter a secret
Temple to discover the Holy Grail
[Music]
but despite the great Hollywood Story
the treasury and most of Petra's iconic
buildings are not temples
their tombs
the nabataeans left very little writing
but on some of their facades are
inscriptions in an Aramaic script
the common language of the Middle East
in the time of Jesus
this one on a facade called turkmenia
reads in part
this tomb is sacred nothing of all that
is inside shall be changed or removed
forever
tomb Raiders disregarded notices like
this so human remains and Grave Goods
rarely survive
but body size niches leave no doubt
these were burial Chambers
in all the Cliffs of Petra hold over 800
tombs
the prominence of these monuments led
many of the early explorers to consider
the possibility that this might just be
a city of the Dead an acropolis
but over the past 200 years all of the
research has actually shown it was a
city of the living as well
Chris Tuttle has been working here more
than 10 years although less than two
percent of the site has been excavated
archaeologists have mapped and surveyed
the area
all in all ancient Petra was a
metropolis about the size of the island
of Manhattan
there is a two square mile downtown
where people lived worked and prayed
suburbs housing more people stretched to
the North and South
based on these surveys Tuttle can
estimate the population
at its height we expect this city house
somewhere between 20 or 30 000 people
[Music]
yet unlike cultures that bury their dead
in isolated areas in Petra tombs are
everywhere
why did the nabataeans carve their tombs
throughout the city and how did they do
it
Paradise hopes his carving project will
provide some answers
creating an experiment in which we
reconstruct a fathod will give us
insight into how the nabataeans carved
these fantastic facades two thousand
years ago
Paradise
Canada of his facade here
the protected world heritage site
he must find a cliff face with the right
kind of sandstone somewhere else
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
search takes him a world away to
Southern California looks like a
promising Prospect yeah while the ocean
view is a sharp contrast to the
Jordanian desert the Sandstone is
identical to Petrus
Paradise enlists stonemason's Blake
Rankin and Nathan hunt
with permission from the landowner they
search for just the right Rock
Hunt is a classically trained Master
Carver and Architectural sculptor with
over 18 years of experience we're
looking for a fine-grained Sandstone
which lends itself to ornamental carving
Sandstone is a soft rock made of
compressed layers of sand and minerals
looks like the type of stone we're
looking for
yeah this is great it looks like it's
going to carve really well
the team has found the perfect Rock and
Cliff face
now they must find the right tools for
the job
[Music]
back in Petra Paradise discovers a clue
in the Stone
chisel marks made from iron tools
the technology is used with chisels and
stonework haven't changed in 2000 years
we use the same chisels
and so they leave the same marks
by matching modern day tool marks with
those found in Petra their advisor Tom
Paradise tells them exactly which tools
to use
the claw chisel
the flat chisel
and the pointed chisel
the pointed chisel is used for the
coarser chiseling that removes large
amounts of Rock
so the pointed chisel is exactly what
hunt and Rankin use to Begin work
carving
their exuberance face fast
carving by hand is seriously slow
there's no way we can do it by hand
a Greek Source says the nabataeans had
few slaves but they probably did have
plenty of skilled Manpower and time
hunt and rank him have neither but they
have power tools
[Music]
even so Rankin insists they're not
cheating this is a chiseled very similar
to one that the nabatians would have
used the only difference is that we've
mechanized the hammer process so that we
can move a lot of stone really quickly
[Music]
members have found the right Rock and
the right tools for the job
as hunt and Rankin prepared The Cliff
face Paradise must decide what exactly
to carve
what makes a nabatian tomb nabatan
many of the facades in Petra actually
look like they belong somewhere else
at the treasury Paradise finds statues
columns and capitals reminiscent of
ancient Greece and Rome
and across Petra he finds architectural
features from other far-flung Empires
a step design associated with a Syria
and Mesopotamia
elephant-headed capitals evoking India
Egyptian obelisks
but Among The Familiar are designs
Paradise has seen nowhere else
there's impediment on the top that is
split in the middle capped by a cone a
capital and an urn at the top
this isn't Greek this isn't Roman
this new design is seamlessly mixed with
features from far-off cultures the
architecture is the synthesis and this
begins to tell us a story that is the
real Petra
what makes a nabatian tomb nabatia is
the combining of their own unique Style
with designs from other Empires
but how did these people in the middle
of the desert come into contact with
such Faraway places
two words
frankincense and myrrh
[Music]
frankincense and myrrh were must-have
luxury items in antiquity
in the New Testament the
three kings bring to the baby Jesus
made from dried sap from trees in the
southern Arabian Peninsula they were
burned obsessively in religious
ceremonies in Egypt Greece and Rome
but to get that incense to Consumers
throughout the mediterranea it first had
to be transported through the desert
after centuries of living as Nomads the
nabataeans knew every secret source of
water
[Music]
if you wanted to cross the desert and
make it out alive you had better have a
nabatium leading the way
along the Route they built outposts to
guard their goods and extract a toll
in a valley just over the mountain from
Petra Andrew Smith has excavated this
fort called beer makur there was
definitely an avatan presence here most
likely related to the trade that came
out of Petra
[Music]
facts he excavated are dozens of tiny
clay perfume bottles
the navajeans were most likely
processing some of the raw frankincense
they would have bottled and then packed
them tightly so that they weren't going
to break and probably load them on
camels or even donkeys
the incense Road became the lifeblood of
the nabataeans
pulsing from Saudi Arabia to the port of
Gaza the gateway to Greece and Rome
the financial reward from this trade
catapults a desert tribe into a powerful
Kingdom
towns and tombs spring up throughout the
Northwestern Arabian Peninsula
by the first century the Roman writer
Pliny called the nabataeans the richest
race on Earth
much of their wealth went into building
their capital city
Petra
[Music]
Tom Paradise believes the nabatians
far-flung trade connections influenced
their domestic designs
because Petra is at Crossroads for the
region it makes sense that they would
adopt and adapt different architectural
styles from a lot of their trading
partners
but with all these different styles what
should Paradise pick for his carving
experiment
sorta facade represents more than 500
other facades in Petra so this style
really is the archetype of the Tomb
facades to Paradise this tomb is
typically nabataean
although it appears plain it's a mashup
of different architectural styles
it has the remains of a Greco-Roman
doorway
nabatian capitals an Egyptian cornice
and a design from Assyria that may
represent a Stairway to Heaven
called a crow step
but when the carving team transfers the
design to California it isn't wide
enough to fit the rock you never really
know how it's going to work in the stone
until you get started we think it's
going to look a lot better if we widen
the facade
but how will making the facade wider
affect the design make each block of the
crow step 7 by 7 inch this would be the
edge of the crosstalk that'd be great
grappling with this problem the team may
shed light on a mystery that has
confounded Scholars for decades
why do nabatian tombs while similar have
unique variations
there's one Motif they modify a lot and
that is the crow step
why the difference we've never really
understood some of the tombs in Petra
have Crow steps that reach all the way
down to a narrow ledge called the
cornice
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other Crow steps meet in the middle
some Scholars have argued this reflects
an evolution in design
[Music]
Paradise thinks they have struck upon a
practical reason as we make the facade
wider it really requires us to take the
crow steps all the way down to the
cornice
if the facade is wider the crow steps
must break apart
increasingly we noticed that changes of
the rock actually cause changes within
the design elements
I think we have to give more credit to
the Rock than we have in the past
so roughly it's about nine inches on
that just start by carving their own
facade they discover a basic principle
of Petra
The Rock influences what they carve and
where they carve it
why here
build their capital in the middle of a
rocky desert poses another age-old
question
who did the nabataeans get enough water
to support such a magnificent City
one clue is here in the city center at a
structure known as the Great temple
its Monumental stairway leads to a large
Stone platform surrounded by over a
hundred columns
holes in the courtyard show there are
channels running underneath it it's
running under the paved floor oh that'll
do it sue Alcock leads a team from Brown
University to investigate
if we could make all this surface
architecture go away you know just kind
of magically lift it up and look down I
think we'd see quite a network of these
channels and canals
she may be short on Magic but Alcott
does have another way to look below the
surface a technology called GPR ground
penetrating radar
excavation is inherently destructive
is a way to get a look at what's down
there in the same way you would go in
for an x-ray perhaps before you went in
for a surgery
the radar sends a high frequency radio
wave into the ground
when the wave passes through different
materials like from Stone to soil
part of the wave is reflected back
but the speed of the wave changes
depending on the material slower for
soil
faster through air
detecting these changes is how the gprcs
where the channels are
[Music]
the team systematically drags the radar
back and forth across the courtyard
there's some kind of a channel right
there
[Music]
beneath the Great temple is a network of
channels that looks like Plumbing
intriguingly the channels seem to extend
beyond the courtyard
when we look at Petra we often tend to
think about building by building and I
actually think it was all tied together
Alcock believes these channels are
evidence of a massive city-wide water
system
Petra was an urban center and it had
Urban water supply
[Music]
there's just one problem with this
Theory
Petra is in one of the driest places on
the planet
if the Great temple is indeed the heart
of a vast engineering system that's
applied an entire city with water
where is all that water coming from
[Music]
one possible source is still used daily
by locals it's called Ein Musa or the
spring of Moses
is it Alison Mickel and Cecilia Feldman
of brown University's survey team joined
Hydro engineer Charles ortloff to
investigate in numbers 2011
vehicle lights were wandering in the
desert and Moses strikes this rock in
anger and water flows forth the story of
Moses miraculously bringing forth water
has been linked in Legend to this rock
and spring
but it would take an engineering Miracle
to get this water from Ein Musa to Petra
City Center it's five miles away
in the Sikh the entrance to Petra the
team finds evidence for how the water
may have been brought here
[Music]
running along the side of the path is a
narrow channel which has imprints of
what were once enclosed ceramic pipes
[Music]
if you look inside of the channel you
can see the actual inference of ceramic
sections that are roughly about a third
of a meter long
at roughly a foot long it would require
tens of thousands of segments to create
a five mile pipeline from einmusa high
in the mountains and every one of those
joints would have the potential to
spring a leak
could the nabataeans possibly have
pulled off such a feat of hydro engineer
here we have at California State
University in San Jose char ortloff and
graduate student Cheyenne mizra hosseini
are trying to figure that out using this
26-foot tank
water is extremely precious to the
nabitaians so ancient engineers need to
design a pipeline that would be free of
leaks
their Challenge and ortloffs is how to
get water to flow through a pipe as
quickly and efficiently as possible the
different angles represent different
choices one choice seems obvious
make the slope of the pipe steep
ortloff sets the slope to six degrees
and turns on the water
things start out well
the water is Flowing fast
but it fills the pipe too quickly
producing an area of turbulence known as
a hydraulic jump which causes the water
flow to slow down this is the hydraulic
jump right here but there's a bigger
problem
the pipe is now filled with water
raising the pressure
in the ceramic pipelines that pressure
could create leaks at the joints
so that design where we have the steeper
slope is not good okay closing all the
valves
if you could put the brick on the other
side just going to slide it over
ortloff adjusts the slope of the pipe to
four degrees a little more
yeah there we go got it
a small change in the slope just two
degrees shallower has a big impact on
the speed of the water the big surprise
here is that we have only changed the
slope by the two degrees and yet we have
a completely different flow pattern
the flow is fast and in this test the
pipe never completely fills with water
which would be good news for Petra's
plumbers
the entire flow has an exposed air space
above the surface and this will prevent
leakage in the system
with the help of modern day tools Port
Loft has shown that the best design for
delivering water fast and leak free is a
four degree slope
and when ortloff measures the angle of
the carved channel in Petra he makes a
remarkable Discovery if we look at
actual field measurements we're able to
see that with their pipeline the ancient
avatarian engineers had a slope of
approximately four degrees
two thousand years ago Petra's Engineers
worked out the perfect design for their
long-haul pipelines
they invented scientific principles that
were only officially discovered in the
west some 2000 years later
[Music]
it is clear that the nabataeans were
Master hydraulic engineers
[Music]
but water is not the only scarce
resource in the desert
wood from local trees was also in short
supply
so how could the nabataeans build their
tombs so high up in the Cliff face
without using large wooden scaffolding
Paradise finds an important clue in this
unusual carving
aptly called The Unfinished tomb the top
is finished the upper area of the
capitals remain somewhat crude and still
in progress
but then below that nothing has been
carved at all it's the natural Sandstone
face
to Paradise
did the top and barely started below can
mean only one thing the navitians
started from the top and carved down
The Unfinished tomb shows that
nabataeans began by sculpting the top
layer of the facade
and then work their way down the cliff
face
[Music]
foreign
back in California Paradise tells hunt
and Rankin they must carve their facade
nabatian Style
top down and without scaffolding there's
a lot of challenges involved in trying
to figure out how the naboteans carved a
piece like this I die like a navy and is
my worst fear
falling off the Rock
up to now they've been using safety
harnesses
but the nabataeans top-down approach
gives them an ingenious idea for how to
carve without harnesses or a large
wooden scaffold we've drilled into the
stone here and placed a couple of pins
and then put a plank on top and created
a temporary and movable ledge it doesn't
require a lot of material
they drive three pins into the Rock
and lay just a couple of planks of wood
across them forming a platform
as their carving descends it erases the
holes they've made leaving no sign of
their platform by the time we get to the
bottom we've pretty much removed all
evidence of any plank
the pin and plank solution works
perfectly
could explain how the navitians were
able to carve so high up without
scaffolding
and why no evidence for the technique
can be found
halfway through the carving the team
makes another discovery
we can move a lot of stone really
quickly with these chisels we've been
moving a surprising amount of stone
every day
a little carving creates a lot of rubble
I really cannot believe that much
carving produced this much Rubble
the rubble has formed a ramp
this means they don't need their
platform anymore now they can just walk
up to the facade when we see this much
material being produced from The Carving
we now realize that we create Rams from
this Rubble that gives you access to the
facade for the stone Carvers
combining the clues found in Petra with
the discoveries in the carving project
a new Theory emerges for how the
nabataeans may have carved the treasury
[Music]
they begin by climbing to the top
[Music]
here they cut a narrow ledge into the
Cliff face
using ancient drills they fix pins below
the ledge and lay planks across to
provide a platform for the Carvers
the first thing they carve is the urn
and the upper layer of the monument
they work their way down sculpting the
split pediment and the Magnificent
statues
about halfway down the debris from The
Carving forms a rattle
now the Carvers can walk up to the
facade and continue carving the
elaborate capitals and the handsome
columns
we don't know of any other culture or
Society using this kind of engineering
technique for this scale of construction
the top-down approach turns out to be a
brilliant Innovation for carving these
tombs in Petra's Sandstone Cliffs
[Music]
but carving is only part of the
treasury's grandeur
its impressive location
commands the head of the canyon and the
entrance to the city
yet the same narrow Canyon that creates
this dramatic reveal can also be a death
trap
the true videos capture a rare but
deadly desert hazard
flash floods
Petra's average annual rainfall of just
a few inches can hit all at once and
pour down this Gorge with lethal Force
took the lives of 22 French tourists
here in 1963 and even today could damage
the treasury
Willie belwald a Swiss architect and
archaeologist has come to Petra to
protect both tourists and the treasury
he's searching for Clues to how the
nabataeans held back the floods
when they decided to carve this facade
into the cliff they had to do something
against flash floods in winter time next
to the treasury is a narrow Gorge here
bellwald finds huge blocks mortared
together to form an ancient Dam
it's 2 000 years old and still totally
preserved
but this one Dam would not be enough to
protect the treasury
so bellwald is on the hunt for more dams
while the landscape appears to be plain
Rock to bellwald it is packed with Clues
he notices different colors on the
canyon wall
above this line the stone is dark
below it's lighter which bellwall
believes is caused by mineral deposits
from water once stored here in a
reservoir
following this water line brings him to
an area where two deep grooves have been
carved into the canyon walls
the grooves show where a dam once stood
all these dams has to be anchored into
the cliffs on both sides that they could
easily withstand the pressure of the
retained water
following these Clues bellwald has
uncovered an ancient nabatian Dam system
the nabataeans built five dams
and to make those dams even more
effective they carved a channel 140 feet
long and 16 feet deep to re-root some of
the water
it's created a large area to store
overflow and reduce the force of the
water before it reached the treasury
[Music]
it's an engineering feat almost as
impressive as the treasury itself
they realized that if they divert the
water
they allowed to War to spread out to a
much bigger surface and this reduced its
speed tremendously
it worked perfectly
so perfectly billboard can't improve on
this design
today a team is repairing this ancient
Dam Network so it can once again protect
the treasury
if we want to keep the treasury for the
future we have to protect it again as
2000 years before from flash floods and
that's exactly what I'm doing
because the threat of floods was so
great bellwall believes the navitians
must have built the dam system
and the treasury at the same time
in fact Scholars now believe the grand
tombs the city center and the Water
Systems most of the Ancient City of
Petra were built within a hundred years
around the birth of Jesus
entire hydraulic infrastructure of Petra
was built following one master plan
so just how much water did that system
provide
back in San Jose Charles ortloff is
figuring that out these are the main
supplies of water from all of the
cisterns or the dams
ortloff has mapped every water feature
he and other archaeologists have
discovered
eight springs for fresh drinking water
36 dams to protect the city from flash
floods over 100 cisterns and reservoirs
to collect and hold rain water and 125
miles of pipeline to connect many of
these features into one integrated water
system
from the map and his Flume experiments
ortloff can estimate the total amount of
water available to Petra's 30 000 people
if you sum up all of the water from
various sources that would lead to eight
liters per person per day
eight liters is about two gallons
in a world before showers and washing
machines that's more than enough water
to survive on
in fact new discoveries revealed that
the nabataeans had enough water to
transform Petra into a Desert Oasis
evidence of that water Surplus is being
found right next to the Great temple in
a large open Terrace
it was named by early explorers as the
marketplace
so when Leanne bedao began digging here
in 1998
that's what she expected because it had
been called a Marketplace I came in
prepared to excavate a market
but as she began digging at eight feet
deep she discovered waterproof cement so
we knew that we had something containing
water or something deep
her team excavated further and
discovered a Subterranean structure we
have the southwest corner here and
directly to the north is the northwest
corner
badal located all four corners to
discover overall dimensions of 140 by 80
feet nearly the size of an Olympic
swimming pool
then in the middle she found evidence of
a stone platform
and surrounding the sunken structure
channels
likely used for irrigating a lower
Terrace
where soil samples suggest the area had
been cultivated
when she puzzles the evidence together
but all concludes the marketplace was in
fact a huge ornamental pool complex
including an island Pavilion and a
garden on a Terrace below
imagine below us this large pool of
water and then
a green garden with date palm trees and
flowers
this is something that is for showing
off
throughout the city center
archaeologists are finding other
decorative water features like fountains
and a canal running beside a colonnaded
street
[Music]
it's really conspicuous consumption of
this precious resource water in this
desert environment
conspicuous consumption of water in the
middle of a desert
it seems Petra resembled another flashy
desert destination
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a great comparison is Las Vegas where
you have this very arid desert
surrounding this Oasis City where
everywhere you go you see the use of
water fountains
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by diverting a precious resource into a
wealthy Center it sends a message to
anybody who sees it that this is a place
of wealth and power
for ancient visitors after days of
traveling on Camel through the hot
parched desert entering this Oasis City
must have made a powerful impression
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Petra's luxurious pools and
internationally inspired architecture
likely sparked the legends that echoed
Through the Ages
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foreign
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after two months of carving and nearly 2
000 years
architecture of far-off lands
emerges from The Rock
we've got aetherian Egyptian Greco-Roman
but you put it together you stand back
and it's navigation and now it's a
little bit Californian
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whether the nabataeans were carving
tombs for the dead or water channels for
the living
their Mastery of stone was the key to
Petra's wealth and beauty
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so why did the nabataean kingdom Decline
and Petra largely disappear
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across the city collapsed columns point
to a prime suspect
ancient texts record a huge earthquake
in 363. as a result for a while when
archaeologists came to Petra anytime
they saw something like this they'd say
ah this fell down in 363.
but one catastrophic earthquake does not
provide the whole picture of the city's
decline
at the great pool the most luxurious
place in Petra there's evidence that
hard times hit the city even earlier
it may have been as early as the second
century because at that point we find a
lot of animal bones at the bottom of the
pool so it seems to have been used for
trash
found in the great pool this layer of
Fallen rocks dates to around the 363
quake
but below that the layer of soil
containing the animal bones indicates
the pool filled in at least a hundred
years before
and there is evidence of more
destruction a hundred years after the
great quake which may have fatally
weakened the city's protective dams
large sections of Petra's Main Street
are missing pavers
unparadise believes they were washed
away in a catastrophic flash flood
the flood waters rushed down through
Petra City Center ripping up
cobblestones
this flood inundated the city and may
have marked the end of Petra's golden
age
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ironically the very water that brought
life to Petra
may also have contributed to its demise
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today in the hills of Southern
California The Carving team is bringing
a bit of Petra back to life
final flourish will be a feature not
found in other cultures
a navity and style Capital with a simple
knob in its Center
normally there is a detail here
typically there is a leaf or a flower
here you never really see it left in
this very abstract form
it's quite beautiful in its simplicity
Paradise believes the nabataeans choose
this simple form out of respect almost
reverence for the sandstone
their sense of the rock as a living
material that had to be sort of caressed
and worked was really as remarkable as
their engineering expertise
and the Sandstone itself becomes a tool
to finish the surface of the Tomb using
the same stone that we carved off the
rock I'm just rubbing the last little
stages
just kind of carefully finishing off
that last surface
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stone is at the core of nabatian lives
the very name for their City Petra comes
from the Greek word for Rock
the nabatan relationship with their
Sandstone was fundamental to who they
were
born in this Valley of Rock
they live in this Valley of Rock
and then when they die they are buried
in the Rock itself
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their final resting place
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each year over a half a million tourists
retrace the steps of the Explorer Johann
Ludwig Burkhart and gaze up in awe at
the treasury
but in the two centuries since Petra was
reopened to the Western World Its
distinctive engineering and culture is
proving equal to that of any ancient
civilization
Petra's more than a city
it was the seed of a kingdom a kingdom
whose peace and prosperity was the Envy
of the ancient world
cisterns channels dams
even fountains and pools
the nabatian Mastery of water fueled
their astonishing city of stone
the water features are underpinning
everything if the navajeans couldn't
control this water you wouldn't have a
city here
over 2 000 years ago a desert tribe
settled among these forbidding Cliffs
and transformed this hostile landscape
into an oasis the nabataans learned how
to maximize these limited resources to
produce a society and a culture that
thrived and prospered for hundreds and
hundreds of years
Brookhart came here chasing Legends of a
city lost in the Sands of the desert
a city with riches from all over the
known world
buildings that rivaled Egypt and Rome
and fountains and pools overflowing with
water
today it's clear many of the legendary
splendors of the Lost City of Petra
are true
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thank you
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thank you
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thank you
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