00:00There you are, trekking across a desert on foot.
00:04It's hot, you're terribly thirsty, and now you gotta walk around this stupid wall.
00:09Wait, a wall in the middle of a sandy, lifeless nowhere?
00:13Exactly, a wall in the northern Saudi desert.
00:17Archaeologists have just made a super exciting discovery,
00:21and what they found was not just a single wall.
00:23No, it was a whole ancient walled city that might date back to 2400 BCE.
00:30They think this place was home to around 500 people and could have been used for a thousand years.
00:36This discovery is groundbreaking.
00:38It means that the area could have been way more advanced than anyone expected.
00:42This city was well-organized, with different zones for living,
00:46towers and strong walls for protection, and different sections for all kinds of daily life.
00:51This ancient city, now called Al-Natah, was basically an oasis town.
00:56And it's great, since it can give us a peek into what life might have been like in this desert thousands of years ago.
01:02Apparently, they had clearly separated areas, like residential sections, a cemetery, farmland, and even a town center.
01:10This oasis city, found in the Kaibar area, is the first big organized settlement from the 2nd or 3rd millennium BCE
01:18that researchers have uncovered in northwestern Arabia.
01:21The first surveys show that this town, which covered about six acres, had several districts,
01:27including the residential area, the cemetery, and the legal one, with courts.
01:31The houses were set up in neat rows, all connected by small roads.
01:36Those streets kept the residential area separate from the rest of the town.
01:40Back then, most people in this region were nomadic herders, always moving around.
01:46But archaeologists have been sure that, during the Bronze Age,
01:50northwest Arabia had small, walled towns and oasis centers scattered across it.
01:54These connected oasis towns were unique, offering secure places for people to live, store goods, and trade.
02:02They started showing the beginnings of urban planning,
02:05which hints that people of that time were already starting to settle down and organize communities more seriously.
02:11The research team estimated that there were about 50 homes in Al-Natal,
02:16but that number could go up to 70 as they keep digging.
02:19They think that a few hundred people lived there,
02:22And probably one of the coolest things is that some houses went up to three stories tall.
02:28Built on a slope near a couple of major trade routes, this city was set up in a prime spot.
02:34Now, one of the most impressive things about this place is its water supply.
02:39The oasis had springs and aquifers, which are underground water sources,
02:44and such conditions were perfect for farming.
02:46Those water sources meant residents could grow their own food,
02:50making the town self-sufficient.
02:52The outer walls probably helped control who could enter the town and get access to its resources.
02:58This settled way of life was an impressive shift from nomadic living to a more agro-pastoral lifestyle,
03:05which means a mix of farming and herding animals.
03:09Another find that supports this theory is a bunch of tools,
03:12like grinding stones, mortars, and pestles, discovered inside the town.
03:16People there must have ground grains and prepared food.
03:20They had a diet of cereals, meat, and milk from animals they raised themselves.
03:25These astonishing findings show that the inhabitants of the town could easily feed themselves
03:30and were surprisingly advanced for that time.
03:33Thanks to better access to Saudi Arabia in the past couple of decades,
03:37archaeologists now have a much clearer picture of what life there was like thousands of years ago.
03:42The most exciting thing is that Al-Natal might have been part of a whole network of similar fortified oasis towns
03:50spread across the region, and all of these connected sites could show us how trade routes and small settlements
03:56worked together at that time in that arid area.
04:00Now, at the same time, this recent discovery isn't the only one that has the scientific world buzzing with excitement.
04:06How about we visit Egypt and see for ourselves?
04:10After all, archaeologists have just found a stash of ancient Egyptian and Greek treasure underwater.
04:17They were exploring the lost city of Thonis Heraklion, off the coast of Egypt, which sank more than 1,000 years ago.
04:24This city was legendary, and nobody even knew where it was until it was rediscovered in 2000.
04:30Now, they're uncovering more and more, and on this dive, they found a pile of gold and silver treasures.
04:38Those were probably used in rituals to bless Egyptian pharaohs when they took the throne.
04:43The researchers even found an ancient Greek temple dedicated to Aphrodite and some super-old Greek weapons.
04:50Frank Gaudio, the lead archaeologist, said it was astonishing that those delicate objects had survived the disaster that brought the city down.
04:58Back in its prime, Thonis Heraklion was one of the biggest port cities in the Mediterranean.
05:04It was a huge center of social life and was the main entry point for ships from Greece coming into Egypt.
05:10But tragically, due to rising waters, earthquakes, and a catastrophic tidal wave,
05:16the soil underneath the city literally turned into mush.
05:20And then the entire city sank into the Mediterranean.
05:24It was forgotten until Gaudio's team founded in 2000.
05:27Since then, they've been uncovering new parts of the city and piecing together its history little by little.
05:34If a lost underwater city doesn't seem impressive enough, we can travel to the Amazon.
05:39The discovery made there is truly mind-boggling.
05:43For centuries, people have talked about lost cities deep in the Amazon, like El Dorado,
05:48that mythical city of gold that lured Spanish explorers into the jungle.
05:52A lot of them never came back.
05:54Then, in the 1900s, a British explorer named Percy Fawcett went searching for what he called
06:00the lost city of Z, and he, too, disappeared.
06:05But now, finally, scientists have actually found proof that those lost cities in the Amazon were real all along.
06:12A team of scientists use a tech called LIDAR, which basically allows you to see through thick jungle from above by bouncing light beams off the ground.
06:21They flew over the jungle in Bolivia in a helicopter about 650 feet up and mapped out those hidden ancient cities.
06:29What they found were ruins of a huge urban settlement built by the Casarabi people, who lived there from 500 to 1400 CE.
06:37And it wasn't just a couple of buildings here and there.
06:40No, the LIDAR maps revealed massive urban centers, pyramids, platforms, roads, canals, and causeways, all carefully laid out.
06:50Turns out the Amazon wasn't just an untouched jungle.
06:53It was once home to big, complex cities.
06:56A scientist from the German Archaeological Institute explained that Europeans had long ignored the possibility of ancient Amazonian cities, but the LIDAR maps showed they were wrong.
07:08The new maps have revealed 26 sites, including 11 that no one even knew existed.
07:14Researchers have discovered two main city sites, Landivar and Kotoka.
07:19They had massive moat causeways stretching out like spokes on a wheel, linking the main cities with smaller surrounding settlements.
07:27Some of the canals even connected the cities to rivers and a big lake, which allowed water to flow through the area.
07:34Over the years, scientists found scattered ruins all over this region.
07:38But the thick jungle made it nearly impossible to connect the dots and see if or how they were related.
07:44With LIDAR, the whole layout came to life, showing that those sites were part of a much larger, organized urban system.
07:52It's now also clear that the sites had a greater meaning, since everything is lined up in a way that could be symbolic of the spiritual beliefs of the inhabitants.
08:02The Qasarabi culture isn't as famous as the Maya, but they had a thriving society in an area that faced huge challenges, like yearly flooding.
08:11And although the nearby Andes had their own monumental sites, the Qasarabi were doing something absolutely unique.
08:19They even had reservoirs to store water, which suggests they might have been dealing with occasional droughts, which is pretty unusual for the Amazon.
08:28Actually, those terrible droughts could be why the Qasarabi eventually left their cities around 1400 CE.
08:34That's it for today.
08:37So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your friends.
08:42Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.
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