Discovery Channel Documentary on AlUla "Architects of Ancient Arabia" Narrator: Jeremy Irons.

a remote corner of saudi arabia an international team attempts to solve an ancient mystery enigmatic stone structures thousands of them scattered across hundreds of kilometers of desolate desert who built them when you see the archaeological sites perched up in places and you wonder what's the symbolism of that saudi arabia is opening up to research thousands of never before studied ancient sites this is an area that has had very little archaeological explorations so we're kind of like explorers really they're finding evidence wow a mysterious prehistoric ritual we quickly understood that this was something big are these massive symbols left by a lost civilization who were the architects of ancient [Music] arabia [Music] a region in saudi arabia's vast west a land of stunning beauty that was once a thriving crossroads two thousand years ago an advanced civilization called the nabataeans carved these sandstone tombs nearly 100 of them many over five stories tall are spread over ten square kilometers remains of an ancient city called hegera as early maya city-states were on the rise in the americas and the han dynasty was building the silk road outward from china here in alula two thousand years ago the nabataeans built hagra to help command one of the ancient world's most lucrative trade networks carrying incense and spices from arabia to egypt rome and beyond it's actually a primary communication room that's been used for the spice trade it's been used for the hajj during much later periods people have used this route for a very long time [Music] over 500 years before the nabataeans the biblical city of dadaan flourished the dance statues have clear greek and egyptian influences and this language is one of modern arabic's ancient ancestors but scattered among these known sites archaeologists are discovering more here much more traces of civilization more ancient than most ever imagined we're driven by curiosity i think our species is simply curious about the past [Music] david kennedy is an aerial archaeologist he studies ancient features from his preferred view 500 feet up these structures are rather perplexing you want to know what it was about you know why people built it like that why they built it they all these unexplained structures form shapes like circles pendants rectangles and even triangles [Music] these are not simply stones that have been heaped up here they've carefully selected flat stones they've built them into proper walls the walls they've got a vertical face on them and they've got sharp corners properly laid out some of them stretch the lengths of five football fields with over 12 000 tons of rock nearly twice the weight of the eiffel tower and then on this ridge up here you can see there's a rather fine example with a fantastic view from the top here the people who built these things obviously had an eye to the landscape david's team has catalogued over 12 000 of these sites it estimated that over 21 000 are spread across alula who built these structures and for what purpose and when with that combination of sites you've got something that's puzzling and there are huge numbers of these puzzles in this landscape around here the aerial survey is part of a much larger investigation being led by the royal commission for alula a saudi 2030 vision inspired organization [Music] saudi specialists are joined by international teams of archaeologists director rebecca foote manages researchers exploring over 20 000 square kilometers it's a huge opportunity but it's a huge challenge as well because there just hasn't been anybody studying this part of the world in such detail their mission uncover the secrets of these desert monuments and reveal a lula's role in the story of human civilization this is the forgotten corner of the region it's almost like we're coming in i wouldn't say with a completely blank piece of paper but it was a rough sketch now we can potentially make a difference in terms of our understanding not just the saudi arabia but the wider region arabia lies to the south of one of the richest archaeological regions on earth the fertile crescent around 10 000 years ago people here began to farm and domesticate animals like cattle this era the neolithic led to what we now call the birth of civilization this period witnesses so much big changes and it's actually the beginning of the modern way of life the most well-known ancient structures like the pyramids and stonehenge came thousands of years later to the south of the fertile crescent the harsh arabian desert was thought to play no part in the birth of civilization just because it's a desert people think must be empty there was no one there the fertile crescent has seen so much research over over 100 years now but somehow that stopped once you get into the arabian peninsula [Music] but archaeologists exploring this new frontier may soon be competing with hundreds of thousands of visitors plans are underway to make a lula a global tourist destination we used to have travellers pilgrims caravans all people who used to pass by alola so people are ready to welcome the world ahmed al-imam is a local historian for much of the last century conservative saudi arabia permitted few tourists aside from pilgrims to mecca but the kingdom is opening up and embracing sweeping modern reforms i can see that people start to be aware we can see the changes happening very fast everyone now is curious what's going to happen ahmed is on his way to alula's old town [Music] a traditional mudbrick village with walls dating back to the 13th century just a few decades ago his family lived here well this is my grandfather house father of my mother even though these homes have no electricity or modern plumbing oldtown retained a vibrant community up until the 1980s for sure it was different the life was very connected and people were very connected with each other today work is underway to preserve old town and make it part of alula's wealth of heritage of course we have to do it responsibly we have something really as a treasure we should take care of it first and then show it to the world [Music] old town dates back centuries but how far back do a luna's other ancient treasures go so currently we're a few nautical miles to the east of our as we head further east we start finding it's much more archaeologically dense up on david kennedy's aerial survey a field team is deciding which structures to excavate first the team is headed by husband and wife archaeologist melissa kennedy and team director hugh thomas they're eager to test a theory [Music] that the structures may be burial markers you go on the ground it's actually quite difficult to see what you're looking at and so you have to think who are these structures supposed to be viewed by is it for the deceased person who's looking down from the afterlife or is it perhaps from the gods today hugh and mel are targeting a 140 meter long structure it's referred to as a pendant we're really interested in it because it's one of the largest pendants in the alola county what we're aiming to get is potentially some dating evidence so we obviously have 32 towers in the towel of this pendant we have to choose what two or three from to activate today if this is a tomb it may still hold human remains artifacts or other vital clues to reveal who built these monuments and why it looks like you have a defined edge there some kind of internal chamber in a remote corner of saudi arabia researchers are investigating a mysterious ancient structure they think it may contain human remains and other clues to the identity of the builders [Music] the team begins to carefully remove stone by hand [Music] there's no evidence of tool use here the naturally flat stones are perfect building blocks there are thousands upon thousands of tons of stone that are going into these structures it's not just built by a family there are communities coming together after a few hours their efforts yield nothing my tower tune looks like it's just full of rock it doesn't look like there's any hollow space or an internal chamber there's the brakes the team soon reaches the impenetrable surface bedrock the tower is empty no artifacts no remains just rock so i'm thinking of basically shutting down mine nothing's coming out on the sieves yes there's no signs of human remains at all the empty towers are puzzling evidence may have been degraded by time and weather or even removed by looters it's also possible these aren't grave sites after all the team must now reevaluate their theories but to hugh this is still progress it is frustrating to be an archaeologist sometimes because i always describe it like putting a a puzzle together you don't have the box lid that's been thrown out long ago and you might get a little snapshot of a corner over here and a side over there and you've got to try and fill in the rest of that puzzle with your own theories [Applause] archaeologists piece together the past by studying evidence left behind by ancient peoples but the collective memory of living people also holds vital clues the bedouin are a nomadic people that have called the deserts of the near east home for at least 2 000 years for generations the recent influx of outsiders has not gone unnoticed the bedouins have many stories concerning these enigmatic monuments they believed them to be far older than hagra dadaan or any of the other civilizations that once called alula home if these stories are true it would make the desert monuments a lula's oldest signs of civilization but exactly how old remains elusive [Music] this looks to me like part of the same basic building tradition yeah jamie quartermaine leads another team documenting these sites look how well built those facades are well i think we might have had a chamber in here today they're exploring a pendant monument but instead of excavating they're using non-invasive technology i'm pretty well ready to launch jamie's expertise is creating three-dimensional digital models of ancient sites [Music] what we're doing is providing systematic coverage across the whole of the area we're taking photographs every couple of seconds [Music] which we can then combine all of the photographs so we end up with an accurate three-dimensional model of the whole land surface these models are an ideal tool for off-site analysis especially here in alula with over 21 000 sites the prospect of going into almost untouched archaeological landscape was probably one of the most exciting things in my life and as we've been concentrating working on the landscape we've seen more and more of the monuments coming up we start beginning to see a much wider and much more important picture that picture may start with this structure they're called mustard the arabic word for rectangle the largest stretch more than five football fields they may be the oldest of the desert monuments perhaps the earliest design the team made a key discovery about the boostertil other structures were sometimes built directly over them but never the other way around [Music] that clean indicated that mrtil were earlier but whether they were 10 years earlier 20 years earlier or 2 000 years earlier is what is only now coming to the form to test this theory that the moostatills are alula's most ancient structure archaeologist wile abu aziz leads the excavation team for me it was really an amazing opportunity as an archaeological project it's huge things go very fast and we're discovering a lot of things so it's a slightly overwhelming the quantity of archaeology that we're finding here the mostatel's outer walls seem to enclose a large inner courtyard perhaps a space for social gathering when you work on these you tend to try to understand how the social groups were composed how many people were involved in the construction of amsterdam how long did it take them to construct this they could be anything they could be burials they could be temples to find answers while must decide which muster deal to excavate first there are hundreds to choose from the one he selects surprises many team members it's highly degraded and barely recognizable when i first came here to be honest with you i was thinking really really wait a minute perhaps not almost dismissed it have fun it did not look substantial it's a risky decision choose wrong and precious weeks could be wasted digging and finding nothing [Music] but wild has a hunch this muster deal is built right up against the prominent rock outcrop presumably an intentional choice by the builders the presence of the outcrop was probably something that was that had a meaning for them wildsteam begins by carefully excavating the ground directly below the outcrop [Music] slowly what at first appears to be loose piles of rock begins to reveal a complex labyrinth of chambers so we are still in the very early stage but already some structural remains start to appear there's something going on here and then after weeks of meticulous work wow ancient charcoal there was a fire here man made fire charcoal is ideal for radiocarbon dating hard evidence that might finally reveal the age of these structures but the ancient fire turns out to be just the beginning of an even more dramatic discovery [Music] in a distant corner of saudi arabia archaeologist wile abu aziz and his team have discovered ancient charcoal wow evidence they hope will help them date a mysterious desert structure called a mustard and what is also exciting is the very good preservation state of these charcoals just like it's just uh being taken from your barbecue except that the charcoals are very old [Music] it's also a tantalizing clue about the function of the mustardy yl uncovers two fire hearths in what appears to be an enclosed chamber [Music] is it some kind of altar and we are now working on clearing the inside of this chamber to try to understand what was the function of it [Music] so we're wondering what were they doing here in this specific area which obviously seemed very very special the evidence is beginning to suggest the mustar till served a ceremonial purpose so it gives us the impression that these structures were involved in the in the ritual beliefs of the of the people at that time meanwhile after their disappointment at the looted pendant hugh and mel continue their search for evidence that some monuments mark ancient grave sites so today we're driving up to the west of alalo and we're going to a site that's called the standing stone circle site which is a type of structure which we know very little about and we're hoping to excavate some of the structures surrounding these standing stone circles that we think may be undisturbed i'm fascinated by why they built these things these stones weigh hundreds of kilos you know it takes a lot of effort to build that so yeah the question is why [Music] the team gets to work at this time their perseverance pays off look at the color of it let's clean that hole look at it bang it [Music] and now we're in this rubbly fill and inside that you can see that we're starting to get fragments of bone the first vines are animal bone [Music] and then we've got part of a vertebrae and possibly lumbar human bone so we'll have to make sure we put that in the fines bag so finding bone here tells us that we're really close to a uh burial [Music] it's now clear among these monuments are tombs [Music] the full discovery is assembled back at the team's base camp how many fragments of bone did we find we collected over 1500 fragments so there's a minimum of six adults in that site even more significant are the dating results [Music] this grave has given us a radio carbon date of 3 900 bc so that's about 6 000 years old six thousand years ago a few thousand years after the emergence of farming civilizations in the fertile crescent were building large-scale structures [Music] but this evidence indicates early builders were already here in arabia [Music] these bones may be evidence of a never-before-seen chapter in human history i think the main reason i do archaeology is because i love thinking about people in antiquity and so the more we excavate the more i can kind of come up those stories in my mind hugh and mel's discovery deepens a lula's historic significance and makes safeguarding the ancient sites a more vital challenge and with tourism ramping up the pressure is mounting alola is being unveiled on the global stage with world-class festivals new infrastructure resorts and attractions an ambitious plan will turn the entire 20 000 kilometer region into a living museum to protect alula's pristine historic landscape a new program is empowering locals to be stewards of the land [Music] now we are here just to raise the awareness of locals from malula to protect their land to protect their heritage hamaya means guardianship the program's goal is to inspire young people to help preserve alula's natural beauty and cultural heritage today's excursion to examine ancient rock art will help students connect with alula's history foreign recently joined the program she now plans to study the ancient languages found engraved on the rock walls [Music] learning to decode these ancient inscriptions will help aisha become an ambassador for alula's rich trove of history [Music] but the rock art here goes back far earlier than the written word and may contain an untold story about the lives of the artists the exciting thing about rockard is that it captures information that is nowhere else in the archaeological record archaeologist maria guanine is a rock art expert she's on her way to a nearby site with carvings believed to be among the most ancient in alula i've brought my little sidekick so he's an experienced rocker baby so i think part of the problem in archaeology is that it's still relatively rare to have children and a career and so i just have to kind of make it up as i go there are some limitations on my time and my sleeping patterns but i think i found a way that works for me and the baby maria is assisted by senior archaeological specialist you can see the head of the human is here you see that the more human figures here are some of them like here but dan is part of a growing wave of saudi female archaeologists this looks like more than three meters oh look this is a big lion maria and arnie wait until sunset for better lighting conditions oh wow oh look [Music] with the artificial light we can now see a lot of the lines more clearly the controllable light reveals primitive images of hunters surrounding prey long horned ibex [Music] lions on the prowl and something unexpected cattle and it turns out there's a whole herd underneath here look these small ones i didn't see those earlier here and there and there today alula is far too arid to support cattle so what are they doing in the rock hunt to maria the engravings were likely made during a period when a lure enjoyed a much wetter climate seven to eight thousand years ago eight thousand years ago when the climate was wetter there's a period when people are hunting wild animals in the rock and then over the top of that at some point comes in at the cattle herders what's interesting is that they all have these markings on the body is this to do with ownership of a herd interprets these stripes as marks of ownership [Music] a time stamp for a crucial transition in human history from hunting to herding this shift from hunting to controlling animals is hugely exciting to me what does that do to their to people's beliefs what does that do to their human animal relationships it's probably the biggest change in human life in our history perfect i'm gonna photograph this little cow and the little car until quite recently it was presumed that seven to eight thousand years ago cattle herding was confined to the fertile crescent and a few isolated pockets of the world [Music] but this evidence suggests that some of history's first cattle herders left their mark here in alula there's the cattle that are just disappearing into the crack yeah but engravings are difficult to date without corroborating evidence back at wild's mustardy excavation new finds are emerging [Music] so rahman one of our workmen found here this uh horn animal horn it's the horn of a domestic cow [Music] and it turns out to be only the beginning over several weeks the team slowly uncovers more and more it was slightly overwhelming to deal with all this quantity of material and we quickly understood that this was something big saeed al-amari makes the key discovery uh buried at the deepest level of what appears to be an offering chamber the team identifies dozens of skull parts including over 80 horns from multiple species of animals saeed noticed the remains were placed [Music] the remains are sent back to base camp where specialists begin piecing together what may be evidence that a major turning point in the history of mankind happened right here in alula archaeologists exploring mysterious stone structures in saudi arabia have discovered that a positive animal remains back at base camp archaeologist jacqueline studo investigates i saw immediately that it was exceptional and it's in my point of view totally new [Music] the remains were deposited with great care suggesting an ancient ritual such a number is amazing and it's difficult to understand as being something else than a ritual deposit jacqueline is most intrigued by the variety of horns most are goats and there are larger species the ibex the gazelle [Music] and there is a third species which is very exceptional domesticated cattle it's the first time cattle have ever been discovered in alula [Music] and the fine supports rock art expert maria guanine's theory the fact that in the excavations they're now finding remains of cattle coming from a rock perspective that was obvious there is so much symbolism and so much use of these animals it must be in the archaeological record maria believes people herded cattle here thousands of years ago when a lula's climate was much wetter did those early herders also build the structure in which the remains were discovered [Music] the final puzzle piece is a newly arrived carbon dating analysis of the animal remains [Music] the results are stunning 5200 bce over 7 000 years ago [Music] when we actually realized that we had dates 7 000 years old there were an awful lot of very excited and raised voices when they realized we all realized how significant it was the data lines perfectly with maria's theory it's amongst the earliest known evidence of cattle domestication in arabia and confirms that a major turning point in human history from hunting to herding spread to a lula much earlier than previously known [Music] we have here the earliest evidence of domestication in the region the environment the way it looks today cattle usually do not live in this kind of environment so it gives also a totally new perception of the environment and and the region in which people were living and that's not all at over 7000 years old the muster deal predates england's stonehenge [Music] and the egyptian pyramids by over 2000 years making them among the oldest large-scale structures in the history of mankind with the mustard heels i can't think of another archaeological phenomenon like that anywhere really you know huge structures built over a large geographical distance and hundreds of them the team has developed strong evidence that over thousand years ago a highly advanced society thrived here in a lunar they left behind some of the earliest evidence in human history of monumental construction and animal domestication and created structures tied to the burial of the dead but as all inspiring as these discoveries are they generate even bigger questions saudi arabia's place in the archaeology of the middle east and of the wider world is really it's only beginning to emerge and we're only beginning to scratch the surface of this i think right from the outset when you get involved in archaeology you realize that you will never answer all the questions we're in a chain of discovery we're never going to get to the end we know that what we can do is move that stage forward and that process is exciting [Music] these discoveries are also inspiring a new generation to once again make a lula a global crossroads each time we discover or we learned about civilization we have here and we think oh this is quite old then arc will just tell us there is something older and then there is something older this is really make me feel proud of course we have to protect this special thing we have [Music] be research continues but it's now clear that some of human civilization's first building blocks were set in place by the architects of ancient arabia [Music] you

Channel: Experience AlUla

Views: 6,510,516

Keywords: Royal Commission for Alula, Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, UNESCO World Heritage Sites, Nabataeans, Petra, Hegra, Discovery Channel, anton somewhere, dazeen, yanni, hidden history, bbc reel, travelfit adventures, bestdestination, يونيسكو, اقدم, اثار, العالم, تاريخ, علماء, ديسكفري, النبطية, الحجر, العلا, الهيئة الملكية, موقع اثري, الأهرامات, pyramids, Mustatil, discoveries, archaeological, مستطيلات, Stonehenge, history

Id: z8A0LpX7_yM

Length: 44min 34sec (2674 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 16 2021