NARRATOR:
It's one of the most magnificent
cities of the ancient world: Petra. Its monumental temple-like tombs
soar over 100 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 30,000 people in one of the most bone-dry
deserts on earth. UELI BELLWALD:
It's not an appropriate location
for a city. There is not even drinking water
down there. NARRATOR:
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? To find out, a geoscientist
teams up with stonemasons to carve a Petra-style tomb. TOM PARADISE:
We're looking at something
that hasn't been witnessed for almost 2,000 years. NARRATOR:
And archaeologists
and hydro-engineers discover how a group of nomads transformed this desert city
into an oasis, the Las Vegas
of the ancient world. LEIGH-ANN BEDAL:
It's really conspicuous
consumption of this precious resource,
water, in this desert environment. NARRATOR:
Finally, after 2,000 years, the secrets of Petra
are about to be revealed. Up now on<i> NOVA,</i>
"Petra: Lost City of Stone." NARRATOR:
It's one of the driest places
is providon Earth. following: (camel grunting) Yet concealed among the canyons
of this harsh desert in the Kingdom of Jordan
is a magnificent ancient city: Petra. 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 Burckhardt
makes his way through the Siq, 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 "Khazneh" in Arabic. Built 2,000 years ago, it is a masterpiece of design
and engineering. Majestic columns rise
from the canyon floor, topped by ornately carved
capitals. Statues of mythological figures
adorn its facade. A fanciful urn graces 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 it has been carved into
the sheer face of living rock. NARRATOR:
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 Mt. Rushmore memorial. As Burckhardt 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. A 6,000-seat theater carved
right out of the sandstone, a main street lined with huge
temple-like structures, and even more spectacular
monuments carved higher in the mountains. But Burckhardt's rediscovery
of the legendary city sparks more questions
than answers. Who built Petra, and why? Burckhardt 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 Nabataeans. An account
from the 4th century BCE describes the Nabataeans
as nomadic tent-dwellers. But three centuries later,
another source describes them as a sophisticated people
inhabiting a prosperous city. Around the time of Jesus, Nabataea is a thriving kingdom
surrounded by Egypt, Judea, and the vast
North Arabian Desert. How, 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? Tom Paradise has spent
over three decades trying to find out. He is a 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? PARADISE:
For many years, people
considered these to be holds for wooden scaffolding
that may have been used for the actual carving. NARRATOR:
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? Paradise believes
the real reason for the marks may be tied to the fanciful name given to this monument
centuries ago. PARADISE:
This building is called
the Khazneh, it is the Treasury, and so legend goes back
millennia that this housed riches. NARRATOR:
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 maybe
those footholds were carved for the purpose of raiding
the upper parts of the Khazneh looking for the treasure. NARRATOR:
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. That go all the way down
to the top... NARRATOR:
Working with a team
of stonemasons, they will try to carve
a Nabataean-style facade for the first time
in 2,000 years. PARADISE:
I may be sitting on the answer
to the age-old question as to how were these facades
carved. NARRATOR:
At the same time, archaeologists
and hydro-engineers are investigating how the
Nabataeans could even survive in this bone-dry environment. BELLWALD:
The entire hydraulic
infrastructure was built, as I think I may prove,
following one master plan. NARRATOR:
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. Now, can scientists
finally uncover how a nomadic tribe
built this city of stone, and why Petra ultimately
vanished into legend? ("Indiana Jones" theme playing) NARRATOR:
Most people
will recognize the Treasury from the climactic scene of<i> Indiana Jones
and the Last Crusade,</i> where Harrison Ford
and Sean Connery enter a secret temple
to discover the Holy Grail. But despite the great
Hollywood story, the Treasury and most
of Petra's iconic buildings are not temples;
they're 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
Turkmeniya, 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-sized niches
leave no doubt these were burial chambers. In all, the cliffs of Petra
hold over 800 tombs. CHRISTOPHER TUTTLE:
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, a necropolis. But over the past 200 years, all of the research
has actually shown it was a city of the living
as well. NARRATOR:
Chris Tuttle has been working
here for more than ten 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
stretch to the north and south. Based on these surveys, Tuttle
can estimate the population. TUTTLE:
At its height,
we expect this city housed somewhere between
20,000 or 30,000 people. NARRATOR:
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. PARADISE:
Creating an experiment
in which we reconstruct a facade will give us insight
into how the Nabataeans carved these fantastic facades
2,000 years ago. NARRATOR:
But Paradise can't carve
his facade here. Petra is a protected
World Heritage site. He must find a cliff face with the right kind of sandstone
somewhere else. His search takes him
a world away, to Southern California. NATHAN HUNT:
This looks like a promising
prospect. NARRATOR:
While the ocean view
is a sharp contrast to the Jordanian desert, the sandstone is identical
to Petra's. Paradise enlists stonemasons
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. NARRATOR:
Sandstone is a soft rock made of compressed layers
of sand and minerals. RANKIN:
That looks like the type
of stone we're looking for. Yeah, this is great. It looks like it's going
to carve really well. NARRATOR:
The team has found
the perfect rock and cliff face. Now, they must find
the right tools for the job. Back in Petra, Paradise
discovers a clue in the stone: chisel marks
made from iron tools. PARADISE:
The technologies used
with chisels in stonework haven't changed in 2,000 years. We use the same chisels, and so they leave
the same marks. NARRATOR:
By matching
modern day tool marks with those found in Petra,
their adviser Tom Paradise tells them exactly
which tools to use: the claw chisel, the flat chisel, and the pointed chisel. PARADISE:
The pointed chisel is used
for the coarser chiseling that removes
large amounts of rock. NARRATOR:
So the pointed chisel is exactly what Hunt
and Rankin use to begin work. RANKIN:
Yeah! It feels good to be carving. NARRATOR:
But their exuberance fades fast. Carving by hand
is seriously slow. HUNT:
There's no way
we can do it by hand. NARRATOR:
A Greek source says
the Nabataeans had few slaves, but they probably did have plenty of skilled manpower
and time. Hunt and Rankin have neither,
but they have power tools. Even so, Rankin insists
they're not cheating. RANKIN:
This is a chisel
very similar to one that the Nabataeans
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. NARRATOR:
The carvers have found
the right rock and the right tools for the job. As Hunt and Rankin
prepare the cliff face, Paradise must decide
what exactly to carve. What makes a Nabataean tomb
Nabataean? 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 Assyria and Mesopotamia, elephant-headed capitals
evoking India, even Egyptian obelisks. But among the familiar are designs Paradise has seen
nowhere else. PARADISE:
There's a pediment at 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. NARRATOR:
This new design
is seamlessly mixed with features
from far-off cultures. PARADISE:
The architecture
is this synthesis. And this begins to tell us
a story that is the real Petra. NARRATOR:
What makes a Nabataean tomb
Nabataean 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. Frankincense and myrrh were must-have luxury items
in antiquity. In the New Testament,
they are among the gifts 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 throhout the Mediterranean, it first had to be transported
through the desert. After centuries
of living as nomads, the Nabataeans knew
every secret source of water. If you wanted
to cross the desert and make it out alive,
you had better have a Nabataean leading the way. (camel grunting) 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 Bir Madhkhur. ANDREW SMITH:
There was definitely
a Nabataean presence here, most likely related to the trade
that came out of Petra. NARRATOR:
Among the artifacts he excavated are dozens of tiny clay
perfume bottles. The Nabataeans
were most likely processing some of the raw frankincense, and they would have bottled
and then packed them tightly so that they weren't
going to break and probably loaded them
on camels or even donkeys. NARRATOR:
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. Nabataean 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. Tom Paradise believes the Nabataeans'
far flung trade connections influenced
their domestic designs. PARADISE:
Because Petra is a crossroads
for the region, it makes sense that they would
adopt and adapt different architectural styles from a lot of their
trading partners. NARRATOR:
But with all these
different styles, what should Paradise pick
for his carving experiment? PARADISE:
This sort of facade represents more than 500 other facades
in Petra. So this style really is the
archetype of the tomb facades. NARRATOR:
To Paradise, this tomb
is typically Nabataean. Although it appears plain, it's a mash-up of different
architectural styles. It has the remains
of a Greco-Roman doorway, Nabataean 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. NARRATOR:
But how will making the facade
wider affect the design? Make each block of the crow step
seven by seven inch. This would be the edge
of the crow steps. RANKIN:
That would be great. NARRATOR:
Grappling with this problem,
the team may shed light on a mystery that has confounded
scholars for decades. Why do Nabataean tbs,
while similar, have unique variations? PARADISE:
There is one motif
they modify a lot, and that is the crow step. Why the difference
we have never really understood. NARRATOR:
Some of the tombs in Petra
have crow steps that reach all the way down
to a narrow ledge called the cornice. Other crow steps meet
in the middle. Some scholars have argued this
reflects an evolution in design. But 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. NARRATOR:
If the facade is wider,
the crow steps must break apart. PARADISE:
Increasingly, we notice that
changes of the rock actually caused changes
within the design elements. I think we have to give
more credit to the rock than we have in the past. Just sort of roughly mark
nine inches on there. NARRATOR:
By carving their own facade, they discover a basic principle
of Petra: the rock influences
what they carve and where they carve it. But why here? Choosing to build their capital
in the middle of a rocky desert poses another age old question: how 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 floor. SUE ALCOCK:
Oh, that'll do it. NARRATOR:
Sue Alcock leads a team from Brown University
to investigate. ALCOCK:
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 would see quite a network of these
channels and canals. NARRATOR:
She may be sho on magic, but Alcock does have another way
to look below the surface: a technology called GPR--
ground-penetrating radar. TOMMY URBAN:
Excavation is inherently
destructive. This 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. NARRATOR:
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 GPR sees
where the channels are. The team systematically
drags the radar back and forth
across the courtyard. URBAN:
There's some kind of a channel
right there. ALCOCK:
Oh yeah, look at that. NARRATOR:
Beneath the Great Temple is a network of channels
that looks like plumbing. Intriguingly, the channels seem
to extend beyond the courtyard. ALCOCK:
When we look at Petra, we often tend to think about
building by building, and actually, I think
it was all tied together. NARRATOR:
Alcock believes these channels
are evidence of a massive city-wide
water system. Petra was an urban center,
and it had urban water supply. NARRATOR:
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 supplied an entire city
with water, where is all that water
coming from? One possible source is still
used daily by locals. It's called Ain Musa,
or the spring of Moses. Allison Mickel
and Cecelia Feldman of Brown University's
survey team join hydro-engineer
Charles Ortloff to investigate. CECELIA FELDMAN:
In Numbers 20:11, it talks about
how the Israelites were wandering in the desert. And Moses strikes this rock
in anger, and water flows forth. NARRATOR:
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 Ain Musa
to Petra's city center-- it's five miles away. In the Siq,
the entrance to Petra, the team finds evidence for how the water
may have been brought here. Running along the side
of the path is a narrow channel which has imprints of what were
once enclosed ceramic pipes. CHARLES ORTLOFF:
If you look inside
of the channel, you can see the actual imprints
of ceramic sections that are roughly about a third
of a meter long. NARRATOR:
At roughly a foot long, it would require
tens of thousands of segments to create a five-mile pipeline
from Ain Musa, 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-engineering? At California State University
in San Jose, Charles Ortloff and graduate
student Shayan Mizrahosseini are trying to figure that out
using this 26-foot tank. Water is extremely precious
to the Nabataeans, so ancient engineers needed to design a pipeline
that would be free of leaks. NARRATOR:
Their challenge, and Ortloff's, is how to get water
to flow through a pipe as quickly and efficiently
as possible. The different angles
represent different choices. NARRATOR:
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. ORTLOFF:
This is the hydraulic jump,
right here. NARRATOR:
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. ORTLOFF:
So that design,
where we have the steeper slope, is not good. SHAYAN MIZRAHOSSEINI:
Okay, closing all the valves. ORTLOFF:
If you can put the brick
on the other side, we're just going
to slide it over. NARRATOR:
Ortloff adjusts the slope
of the pipe to four degrees. A little more. There we go. Got it. NARRATOR:
A small change in the slope,
just two degrees shallower, has a big impact
on the speed of the water. ORTLOFF:
The big surprise here is that
we have only changed the slope by two degrees, and yet we have a completely
different flow pattern. NARRATOR:
The flow is fast. And in this test, the pipe never
completely fills with water, which would be good news
for Petra's plumbers. ORTLOFF:
The entire flow has an exposed
air space above the surface, and this will prevent leakage
in the system. NARRATOR:
With the help
of modern day tools, Ortloff 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. ORTLOFF:
If we look at actual
field measurements, we're able to see that
with their pipeline, the ancient Nabataean engineers had a slope of approximately
four degrees. NARRATOR:
2,000 years ago, Petra's engineers worked out
the perfect design for their long-haul pipelines. ORTLOFF:
They invented
scientific principles that were only officially
discovered in the West some 2,000 years later. NARRATOR:
It is clear that the Nabataeans
were master hydraulic engineers. 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
remains somewhat crude and still in progress. But then below that,
nothing has been carved at all. It's the natural sandstone face. NARRATOR:
To Paradise, the progression
of finished at the top and barely started below
can mean only one thing. The Nabataeans started
from the top and carved down. NARRATOR:
The unfinished tomb
shows that Nabataeans began by sculpting the top layer
of the facade, and then worked their way
down the cliff face. Getting windy again. Yep. NARRATOR:
Back in California,
Paradise tells Hunt and Rankin they must carve their facade
Nabataean style: top down
and without scaffolding. HUNT:
There's a lot
of challenges involved in trying to figure out
how the Nabataeans carved a piece like this. I die like a Nabataean
is my worst fear. (laughing) Falling off the rock. NARRATOR:
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. RANKIN:
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 that doesn't require
a lot of material. NARRATOR:
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. NARRATOR:
The pin and plank solution
works perfectly. It could explain
how the Nabataeans 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. RANKIN:
We can move a lot of stone
really quickly with these chisels. We've been moving a surprising
amount of stone every day. NARRATOR:
A little carving creates
a lot of rubble. I really cannot believe
that much carving produced this much rubble. NARRATOR:
The rubble has formed a ramp. This means they don't need
their platform anymore. Now they can just walk up
to the façade. PARADISE:
When we see this much material
being produced from the carving, we now realize that we create
ramps from this rubble that gives you access to the
facade for the stone carvers. NARRATOR:
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. They begin by climbing
to the top. 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 ramp. Now the carvers can walk up
to theacade 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. NARRATOR:
The top-down approach turns out
to be a brilliant innovation for carving these tombs
in Petra's sandstone cliffs. 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. These amateur 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. Flash floods took the lives of
22 French tourists here in 1963, and even today
could damage the Treasury. Ueli Bellwald, 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. BELLWALD:
When they decided to carve
this facade into the cliff, they had to do something against
flash floods in wintertime. NARRATOR:
Next to the Treasury
is a narrow gorge. Here, Bellwald finds huge blocks
mortared together to form an ancient dam. BELLWALD:
It's 2,000 years old and still totally preserved. NARRATOR:
But this one dam would not be
enough to protect thTreasury, 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 Bellwald 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. BELLWALD:
All of these dams
had to be anchored into the cliffs on both sides
that they could easily withstand the pressure
of the retained water. NARRATOR:
Following these clues, Bellwald has uncovered
an ancient Nabataean 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 reroute some of the water. This created a large area
to store overflow and reduce the force
of the water before it reached the Treasury. It's an engineering feat almost as impressive
as the Treasury itself. BELLWALD:
They realized that
if they divert the water, they allow the water to spread
out to a much bigger surface. And this reduced
its speed tremendously. It worked perfectly. NARRATOR:
So perfectly, Bellwald
can't improve on this design. Today, a team is repairing
this ancient dam network so it can once again protect
the Treasury. BELLWALD:
If we want to keep the Treasury
for the future, we have to protect it again
as 2,000 years before from flash floods. And that's exactly
what I'm doing. NARRATOR:
Because the threat of floods
was so great, Bellwald believes the Nabataeans
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 100 years
around the birth of Jesus. BELLWALD:
The entire hydraulic
infrastructure of Petra was built
following one master plan. NARRATOR:
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,
all the dams. NARRATOR:
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 rainwater, 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. NARRATOR:
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
reveal 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 Leigh-Ann Bedal
began digging here in 1998, that's what she expected. LEIGH-ANN BEDAL:
Because it had been called
a marketplace, I came in prepared
to excavate a market. NARRATOR:
But as she began digging,
at eight feet deep, she discovered
waterproof cement. BEDAL:
So we knew that we had something
containing water, something deep. NARRATOR:
Her team excavated further and discovered
a subterranean structure. BEDAL:
We have the southwest
corner here, and directly to the north
is the northwest corner. NARRATOR:
Bedal located all four corners to discover overall dimeions
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, Bedal concludes the marketplace was in fact
a huge ornamental pool complex including an island pavilion
and a garden on a terrace below. BEDAL:
If you could 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. NARRATOR:
Throughout the city center,
archaeologists are finding other decorative water features
like fountains, and a canal running beside
a colonnaded street. It's really conspicuous
consumption of this precious resource,
water, in this desert environment. NARRATOR:
Conspicuous consumption of water
in the middle of a desert? It seems Petra resembled another
flashy desert destination. BEDAL:
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. By diverting a precious resource
into a wealthy center, it sends a message
to anybody who sees it that it is a place
of wealth and power. NARRATOR:
For ancient visitors, after days of traveling on camel
through the hot, parched desert, entering this oasis city must
have made a powerful impression. Petra's luxurious pools and internationally inspired
architecture likely sparked the legends
that echoed through the ages. Back iCalifornia, after two months of carving
and nearly 2,000 years, architecture of far-off lands
emerges from the rock. PARADISE:
We've got Assyrian,
Egyptian, Greco-Roman, but you put it together, you stand back
and it's Nabataean. And now it's a little bit
Californian. That's right. NARRATOR:
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. So why did
the Nabataean kingdom decline and Petra largely disappear? Across the city, collapsed columns point
to a prime suspect: ancient texts record
a huge earthquake in 363. ALCOCK:
As a result, for a while, when archeologists
came to Petra, any time they saw something
like this, they would say, "Ah, this fell down in 363." NARRATOR:
But one catastrophic earthquake does not provide the whole
picture of the city's decline. At the Great Pl, the most
luxurious place in Petra, there's evidence that hard times
hit the city even earlier. BEDAL:
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. NARRATOR:
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 100 years before. And there is evidence
of more destruction 100 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. Tom Paradise believes
they were washed away in a catastrophic flash flood. PARADISE:
The floodwaters rushed down
through Petra's city center, ripping up cobblestones. This flood inundated the city and may have marked the end
of Petra's golden age. NARRATOR:
Ironically, the very water
that brought life to Petra may also have contributed
to its demise. Today, in the hills
of Southern California, the carving team is bringing
a bit of Petra back to life. The final flourish will be a feature
not found in other cultures: a Nabataean-style capital with a simple knob
in its cter. 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 splicity. NARRATOR:
Paradise believes the Nabataeans choose this simple form
out of respect, almost reverence,
for the sandstone. PARADISE:
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. NARRATOR:
And the sandstone itself
becomes a tool to finish the surface
of the tomb. HUNT:
I'm 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. NARRATOR:
Stone is at the core
of Nabataean lives. The very name for their city,
Petra, comes from the Greek word
for rock. PARADISE:
The Nabataean relationship
with their sandstone was fundamental
to who they were. They're 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. These hewn tomb facades become
their final resting place. NARRATOR:
Each year, over half a million
tourists retrace the steps of the explorer
Johann Ludwig Burckhardt and gaze up in awe
at the Treasury. But in the two centuries since Petra was re-opened
to the Western world, its distinctive engineering
and culture is proving equal to that
of any ancient civilization. TUTTLE:
Petra is more than a city. It was the seat of a kingdom, a kingdom whose peace
and prosperity was the envy
of the ancient world. NARRATOR:
Cisterns, channels, dams,
even fountains and pools. The Nabataean mastery of water fueled their astonishing city
of stone. ALCOCK:
The water features
are underpinning everything. If the Nabataeans couldn't control the water,
you wouldn't have a city here. NARRATOR:
Over 2,000 years ago, a desert tribe settled
among these forbidding cliffs and transformed this hostile
landscape into an oasis. PARADISE:
The Nabataeans learned how to
maximize these limited resources to produce a society
and a culture that thrived and prospered for
hundreds and hundreds of years. NARRATOR:
Burckhardt 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. The story continues online, ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
