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Documentary, Lost City of Arabia
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00:01Tonight on NOVA, the search for a legendary city in an endless desert.
00:10A quest to understand a forgotten people.
00:15Tantalizing clues of long-drawn adventurers to seek out the ancient city of Ubar.
00:21Now, a new team of archaeologists takes up the challenge.
00:25Will they at last discover the lost city of Arabia?
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01:18By the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and viewers like you.
01:23For centuries, the Ruh-Balkali Desert of Southern Arabia has kept its secrets.
01:49It is said that when God divided the world into the sea and the settled lands, he left this as the empty quarter.
02:06Uninhabitable, forbidding, unknown.
02:10And yet, it is also said that a fabulous city called Ubar once thrived here, only to be swallowed up by the dunes.
02:22If Ubar was real, it owed its existence to the incense trade.
02:32Camel caravans and ships carried balsam, myrrh, and frankincense for hundreds or thousands of miles, centuries before Christ.
02:41Even today, the most precious cargo of the ancient caravans is still being harvested by hand in Oman.
02:54A gift suitable for the Queen of Sheba and celebrated in the story of three wise men.
03:11The finest frankincense in all the world.
03:14Although the trees look like scrub, their resin was once valued as highly as gold.
03:24In Arabic, frankincense is called luban, or milk.
03:28At first white, it hardens quickly into fragrant crystals.
03:32So valuable was frankincense, that Alexander the Great and the Roman emperors dreamed of conquering this land.
03:52In this small Omani village of the Shahra people, the day is still measured by the burning of frankincense.
03:58First, hot coals are placed in a burner, then the crystals.
04:13The Shahra's unique tongue has been called the language of the birds.
04:19Migrating south from the Mediterranean in ancient times, the Shahra's isolated way of life has been preserved.
04:25A glimpse of a nearly vanished past.
04:35Says the woman,
04:36Incense is most pleasing to God, but the men chider for using too much.
04:41Enough woman, enough.
04:43For thousands of years, the use of frankincense ranged from the religious to the strictly practical.
05:01It was a sacred offering to the gods,
05:03burned in sanctuaries and temples.
05:05But it was also used to mask the harsh smells of everyday life.
05:21Frankincense was also thought to have medicinal powers.
05:24Here it's used to help a child suffering from a cold, with his mother to comfort him.
05:32There we are.
05:34It is, it is used to laquelle she lived in theail처럼.
05:36The disease kommer to the
05:45It is done in the house right now.
05:47Serious to you many cultures
05:53The Shara still sing their ancient songs in the language of the birds.
06:07They declare proudly that they are the direct descendants of people who built a great city
06:13in the distant past, somewhere in the desert along one of the incense roads.
06:21If they are right, their song may be the last echo of the fabled lost city of Ubar.
06:43When Ubar supposedly disappeared around 300 A.D., the legend began.
06:50According to a 13th century historian, Rashid al-Din, Ubar was a city created as an imitation
06:57of paradise.
06:59It prospered beyond all measure from the frankincense trade.
07:08Ubar was the pride of a prideful king, Shadad, son of King Ard, grandson of Noah.
07:21Ubar was the splendor of Shadad city, with its sumptuous palace and magnificent gardens.
07:28Too great in the eyes of a prophet who decried the king's arrogance and impiety and the wickedness
07:34of his subjects.
07:40But the Ubarites were too dissolute to pay heed to the prophet.
07:44They were too drunk to hear his words, too licentious to care.
07:49And so God punished the people of Ubar with a great wind and a terrible noise from the clouds,
07:55which struck them dumb.
07:56Then a voice rang out, you shall perish.
08:09When morning came, there was nothing to be seen except ruins.
08:16From that day on, Ubar belonged to evil creatures, each with a single arm, leg and eye.
08:25And it was written that anyone who ventured near would be driven mad with fear.
08:37The Ubar legend proved irresistible to a handful of explorers like Bertrand Thomas of England.
08:48Sixty years ago, Thomas set out on a daring journey and became the first European to cross
08:53the Rub al-Khali Desert.
09:00Along the way, he encountered an ancient caravan route over 100 yards wide.
09:08As Thomas wrote later, a Bedouin guide called it the Road to Ubar.
09:14While Thomas mapped his position, the Bedouin explained that Ubar was a great city.
09:22Our fathers have told us that it existed of old, he said, a city rich in treasure.
09:27It now lies buried beneath the sands, some few days to the north.
09:36Short on water, Thomas could not follow the road, but he passed on the information to his
09:41friend T. E. Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia.
09:49Dressed here in Arab clothing, Lawrence is fourth from the right, standing with hands clasped.
09:55A soldier and archaeologist, he had a deep love of Arabian history and culture.
10:05Back in England, Lawrence became convinced the remains of Ubar lay in the desert.
10:11He called it the Atlantis of the Sands.
10:15But before he could return to Arabia, he died in 1935.
10:31It wasn't until 20 years later that a major expedition was launched by a young American
10:36archaeologist named Wendell Phillips.
10:47Hoping to find and follow the road that Bertram Thomas described, Phillips ventured into the
10:53Rub al-Khalib.
10:55Thomas' expedition of trucks pushed on through the shifting sands, until finally it reached
11:00a caravan route with 84 parallel camel tracks.
11:07Thomas' road to Ubar, as it must have looked for centuries.
11:13But Ubar itself eluded him.
11:18The caravan route led into a region of impassable dunes.
11:24From here I knew we were through, wrote Phillips, for there is no barrier so great as billowing, immeasurable
11:35sand stretching as far as the eye could see in cruel and sublime grandeur.
11:43Finally, in California, at the Huntington Library, a filmmaker and amateur archaeologist named Nicholas
11:59Clapp decided to try again.
12:05For years he searched among books, documents and maps for clues to Ubar's location.
12:11Finding the fabled city became his obsession.
12:23This was Arabia, Arabia in the days of the incense trade.
12:28And in a way, here was a treasure map, for right where it ought to be, just north of where
12:34the finest frankincense was grown, is the land of the Yobaratai.
12:39That's Latin for Uberites.
12:45There were other clues in the library's climate-controlled vaults, tantalizing hints in the Koran, references
12:53in the Arabian Nights and Greek and Roman histories, and the works of Islamic geographers.
13:01In some books, Ubar was mentioned, but had a different name, or the Uberites were called
13:06the people of odd.
13:07But nothing gave Ubar's exact location or proved it was real.
13:13We have main engine start.
13:18Instead, it was the latest in space technology that provided the breakthrough.
13:26NASA scientists, intrigued with the Ubar story, agreed to alter the space shuttle's flight plan.
13:32For 95 orbits around the Earth, the astronauts performed their usual experiments.
13:40But on the 96th orbit, they steered toward the Rub al-Khali.
13:47A powerful radar signal was beamed to Earth, capable of revealing a hidden past beneath the
13:59sand.
14:04At NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, pictures from the shuttle and two satellites were then examined.
14:12Known as false-colored images, they were enhanced by computers to bring out subtle geological
14:18irregularities.
14:19So, we're looking at a big chunk of country, you know, I think we've got something with
14:24this.
14:25Ron Bloom is a NASA geologist.
14:26Yeah, this is false color.
14:27This is a lancet quarter seam.
14:29We're about 90 kilometers across here.
14:32Bertram Thomas Road area is up in here at the top.
14:36Right across the Wadi Matan there.
14:38Yeah, exactly.
14:39It's an ancient lake bed that hints at a greener past.
14:43And what we want to do is go up in here.
14:48Because caravan roads are beaten down more than surrounding areas, their soil has different
14:54reflective properties.
14:56By scanning several bands of light, the imaging reveals the roads as gossamer-thin lines.
15:03Any more processing we can do?
15:05I've done an enhancement called band ratio, where we divide one band by another.
15:10What that tends to do is enhance the reflectance properties in some cases, in some cases they
15:14cancel out.
15:15So we'll see what that does for us.
15:16Let's see.
15:17Further processing may tell which roads are relatively new, and which, if any, are ancient.
15:22Here we go.
15:24Only when reflected near-infrared light is imaged in color is the answer revealed.
15:41Now, only one road remains, the oldest of them all.
15:48But is it the road to Ubar?
15:49Yeah.
15:50And we've got a good track all the way, all the way up through here.
15:53That's incredible.
15:54Okay.
15:55The only way to find out for sure is to travel to Oman.
16:06A country of one and a half million, Oman gets most of its income now from oil.
16:14But there are still people who follow the old ways.
16:19And you talk of ancient glory, when frankincense was king and all the world sought it.
16:29Although Ubar was thought to be far inland, if anywhere, a new expedition begins on the Omani coast, nearest the incense groves.
16:47In ancient days, the Romans called this land, Arabia Felix, or Fortunate Arabia.
16:56Not out of admiration for its natural beauty, but out of envy for its wealth.
17:01Today, it belongs mostly to the wildlife.
17:06Before the team members search for the road to Ubar, they hope to find some trace of its builders, the mysterious people of Aad.
17:25They know that 2,000 years ago, ships arrived at a port called Mosha, from as far away as the Indies, seeking cargoes of frankincense.
17:35These ruins are all that remain of a town that guarded the harbor below.
17:42No one knows if it's really Mosha, but it does date to the time of Ubar.
17:47The expedition team is international, a mix of amateurs and professionals led by Nick Clapp.
18:00Ron Bloom is chief navigator.
18:02A little closer to the camera here.
18:05Archaeologist Yuri Zarens is an expert on Arabia.
18:11While explorer Rand Finds, on the right, will handle logistics.
18:15Finds, like Zarens, isn't sure whether Ubar is a single city or an entire land.
18:23After so many years of planning, the search for Ubar is about to begin.
18:40But Ubar's people of Aad proved to be as elusive as Ubar itself.
18:45An inscription at some nearby ruins proclaims the site a colonial outpost of another distant kingdom.
18:56There is no mention of the people of Aad or Ubar.
19:08Hopeful of finding other sites, Yuri Zarens and Rand Finds explore the coast.
19:14Wait a minute. Slow down a little bit.
19:17Let's take some of these over here. They're really quite nice.
19:20Want to see those structures over there?
19:21Got a big rock we see. You want to stop?
19:23No, no. Slow down here. These are really important.
19:25Near an inlet named Corsoli, they find hundreds of stone structures in an ancient graveyard.
19:32Scattered all over the place. Large, huge blocks you see like that.
19:36And they're all over it out here. You've never found anything yet, right?
19:39Okay, let's take a look. All right, what do we got?
19:42This is a reflection on my instructor.
19:43Now don't step on that. There's something right there. See that? Look at there.
19:46That's pottery. So what we have here is some of that burnished ware.
19:50Now look at that. See, hold that in the sun there. It kind of shines. See that?
19:53Mm-hmm.
19:54So the people who made that pottery took a little stick and they rubbed it real good to give it a shine.
19:57They were poor. They couldn't make fancy pottery.
19:59So that kind of technique tells us a lot because it's not as recent as some of the other pottery.
20:04And it's at least from the time of Christ, maybe even a lot earlier.
20:07The pottery's age and distinctive style leads errands to believe it could be the work of the people of Odd.
20:21Ubar is thought to have lasted for 3,000 years.
20:24But when it disappeared a few centuries after Christ, the people of Odd seemed to vanish with it.
20:38Of all the coastal sites the expedition team visited, it was most interested in a place called the Oracle of Odd.
20:45An Oracle is an ancient shrine to the gods, but the site is also marked by a great dry well.
21:02I ran right to your left. Yeah, there you go.
21:07They find something at the well's ancient water line.
21:11What do we got, four blocks there?
21:14It's a cluster of stones, which could be the remnants of a platform where the people of Odd filled their jugs with water.
21:24Now you see by your left foot.
21:25Yeah.
21:26Yeah, go to your left a little bit more with the trowel.
21:27Yeah.
21:28Yeah, what's that?
21:29Wood.
21:30Can you get down to it?
21:31The wood dates to a period when Ubar had already vanished.
21:35But there may be older artifacts down at the bottom.
21:40See that ledge just behind you, Nick?
21:41Got about five feet.
21:42Okay.
21:43If we touch it at all, we'll bring the whole lot down.
21:44So you've got to be very, very careful.
21:45We're close here.
21:46Stop!
21:47These look really precarious.
21:48What was planned as a brief inspection now threatens to become something far more difficult.
21:52You can see that ledge just behind you, Nick.
21:53Got about five feet.
21:54Okay.
21:55If we touch it at all, we'll bring the whole lot down.
21:58So you've got to be very, very careful.
22:00We're close here.
22:01Stop!
22:02These look really precarious.
22:07What was planned as a brief inspection now threatens to become something far more difficult.
22:17More dangerous.
22:18Behind us.
22:19Look.
22:20On the bottom of that area there.
22:21Right the way across for about 15 feet.
22:23One goes, the whole lot will go.
22:26The search is quickly abandoned.
22:31Disappointed, the team leaves the coast for the rugged slopes of the Dothar Mountains,
22:37beyond which lies more fertile land.
22:41For centuries, the mountains protected the people of Aad from coastal invaders.
22:46Today, the region is settled by the Shahra tribe.
23:01A similar chant would have been heard as the ancient caravans passed through on their
23:06way to the frankincense groves.
23:19This was thought to be a land of djinns, spirits who could stir the wind.
23:25The legend, like the mountains, discouraged the uninvited.
23:38In the fifth century BC, Herodotus, the Greek historian, warned of flying snakes that guarded
23:44the frankincense trees.
23:49Today, the carpet viper is deadly enough, with no antidote for its venom.
24:03Those who traveled in the caravans sometimes left their mark in the valley's many caves.
24:15Perhaps while camped here, a man saw a wolf attacking an ibex and recorded the scene.
24:22Nearby, a camel had just given birth and was suckling her yarn.
24:34And here are camels laden with incense on their way to Jerusalem, Damascus or Antioch,
24:41Gaza or Alexandria.
24:49This may be the root itself, winding its way through the centuries.
25:01Not far from the groves lies the veil of remembrance.
25:08Here, one can find the remains of the once-honored dead, now long forgotten.
25:18Further down the veil are monuments called triliths, ancient memorials lining the route into the desert.
25:29A few miles further, and the sands erase everything.
25:34Graves, monuments, even cities.
25:48The expedition plan is to angle across the desert, to intercept the Ubar Caravan Road,
25:59at a point close to where the team hopes the city is hidden.
26:05The way lies across a plain of illusions, showing water where none exists.
26:15The illusion is caused by the heat, an apt symbol of everything that remains ethereal about the desert city.
26:22Like the discoverers of ancient Troy, the team can only hope that all the tales of Ubar are more than a mere mirage.
26:37Once again, they turn to space-age technology.
26:43Okay, you've got a position.
26:46Ready to find a position for us.
26:48Very difficult to navigate around here.
26:50All the dunes look very similar.
26:52The team relies on a global positioning system.
26:55But today, the system isn't working, because the satellites are being realigned.
27:06Getting lost in the desert can be a fatal mistake.
27:11When they set up camp, they carefully check their equipment and supplies.
27:18Food, water, and fuel will be rationed from now on.
27:24Although some settlements exist at the edge of the empty quarter, they are few and far between.
27:36There are other dangers here as well.
27:38Rand Fiennes remembers a brief encounter with the dreaded camel spider.
27:46Not asleep yet.
27:50Eighteen years ago, we were camped near here.
27:53My signaller, Ibrahim, got visited in the night.
27:57The spiders are six inches long, hairy legs, and big mandibles.
28:03One of them couldn't get into his sleeping bag, so it started to eat his face.
28:08It desensitizes before it bites, so you don't know that it's biting.
28:13This fellow woke up in the morning, and half of his nose and all of his cheek had gone AWOL.
28:19Sleep well.
28:20That looks like it might be a little soft.
28:24Careful.
28:25Okay.
28:26Okay, here we go.
28:27Oh, this is soft.
28:28Just hold on in the back of it, Nick.
28:29Yep.
28:30Oh, very good.
28:31All right.
28:32Here we go.
28:33On the second day out, the team encounters its first heavy dunes.
28:36Inevitably, the vehicles get stuck.
29:01It becomes a well-worn routine.
29:11Shovel sand away from the wheels.
29:14Drop the air pressure to 16 pounds per square inch.
29:19Jack up the wheels.
29:22Then drop them back down onto aluminum sand ladders.
29:27If anyone complains, they need only be reminded of Bertram Thomas, who spent two weeks on a camel getting here.
29:40On the other hand, Thomas was never lost.
29:44Highlighted on this false color map is the planned search area.
29:48But without a satellite reading, the team could be anywhere.
29:52By the time the device is working, they're far off course.
30:01Okay, we got a reading.
30:07And it looks like we're about 30 kilometers from where we want to be.
30:16That's not too good.
30:17No, we're up here by this dune.
30:20This is this dune behind us.
30:22And where we want to be is all the way over here.
30:27And it's roughly 30 kilometers between the two, but we can't go straight there.
30:31We're going to have to work our way back down this dune street.
30:34And then either out through here or out around through here.
30:37With all the fuel expended on yesterday's detour, there's no room for further error.
30:42If Ron's doing his dead reckoning navigation very carefully, there shouldn't be any bother.
30:47But when you come to these two enormous lines of heavy dune, I can't see a way through.
30:59Sand's okay.
31:00Now you can see a bit further ahead.
31:01Oh, this is great.
31:02Well, I think you want to generally aim for that dune out there.
31:05Okay.
31:06That makes sense.
31:08From looking at the image, this is the only way in here.
31:11Short of walking, that is.
31:12So the one that I'm aiming at now is the one you want to hear?
31:15Yeah.
31:21Their high-tech navigating system occasionally goes down.
31:25When that happens, the team is reduced to simple dead reckoning.
31:30Every few kilometers, they have to stop and take a compass reading.
31:34One mistake and they're lost again.
31:37Hold it a second.
31:38I'm going to take a, okay?
31:39Yeah.
31:45The reading must be taken away from the vehicle's magnetic field.
31:49Okay.
31:51Two...
31:5324 degrees.
31:55There's a Bedouin song of the desert that goes,
32:06Only a fool will brave the desert sun, searching for ghostly cities of the mind.
32:11Allah protect us from jinns and fiends, spirits of evil who infest the dunes.
32:30That's a little bit.
32:31Yeah.
32:32We're coming out now?
32:33Yeah.
32:34We're just coming out of this nasty stuff right here.
32:35All right.
32:37If their calculations are right, they should be able to see the road from atop this ridge.
32:43The caravan route that Bertram Thomas found more than 60 years ago.
32:59And there it is at last, a track in the sand slightly lighter in color, the road to Ubar.
33:162,500 camels at a time would have passed here, on their way to the great markets of the ancient world.
33:32So what we're looking at is an encampment, and here, for example, you've got a potsherd,
33:51which means that, again, in this particular part of the world, we're talking about the time zone, say 1500 BC.
33:57Who's previously found pottery inside?
33:59There hasn't been any really in the empty quarter per se.
34:01What, so this is the first bit of pottery?
34:03Yes, that's one of the first pieces we've ever found.
34:05Right.
34:06Rubal holly.
34:07Yuri, you are a maestro.
34:17But finding the road to Ubar is just the beginning.
34:21After a brief stop, they push on, with Zarin's as lookout.
34:26Okay, go ahead.
34:28Off your left, on my way.
34:31But when they try to follow the road north, it becomes increasingly difficult to imagine a city thriving here, or even surviving.
34:47And even if Ubar does lie out there, the chances of finding it seem nil.
34:59Only one hope remains, that this isn't the road to Ubar, but the road from Ubar.
35:15That the city lies back the other way, closer to the incense groves.
35:27According to this satellite map, branches of the road lead to a pair of other sites, Hylet, Araka, and Shisher.
35:33The team checks out Hylet Araka first.
35:40There's little evidence of occupation from the time of Ubar.
35:49And yet, there's an ancient tale about the incense road, told by the local sheikh.
35:56The story is that Hylet Araka was once an outlying settlement in the land of the Ubarites.
36:05Caravans coming up from the incense groves would stop here to rest.
36:12Then, they would go on to the great water hole at Shisher, as represented by these two stones.
36:19A number of branches converge on Shisher.
36:24It's the team's last chance to find clues about Ubar's location.
36:39But Shisher has undergone a radical transformation in just a few years.
36:44A modern village has been built here by the government.
36:49There's even a housing development, would you believe?
36:53No.
37:01The people of Shisher welcome the visitors warmly.
37:05Salaam Alaikum. Peace be upon you.
37:08No matter what peculiar reasons brought the strangers to the village.
37:14It's time for tea and conversation.
37:37For its part, the team puts on a cheerful front.
37:46But after ten years' research and a full-scale expedition, there is nowhere else to go.
37:55They are quite literally at the end of the road.
38:00Ubar, surely we don't know where it is, says the Sheikh.
38:07Maybe not far away.
38:09Things get misplaced in the desert.
38:12But if the visitors are interested in ruins, there are in fact some here.
38:16They are just behind the tent.
38:19According to the villagers, these are the remnants of a fort 500 years old.
38:30Bertram Thomas was told the same story, and there is little reason to doubt it.
38:34In Arabic, Shisher means the cleft, formed long ago when an underlying cavern collapsed.
38:46I think there is a fracture system here, and that will provide all the water.
38:48All right, so what we got here then is kind of initially a large kind of dome.
38:52People may be living around it in kind of a seep, and then the water table fell down, then this fell in on it.
38:57Yeah, it created a sinkhole from all the water moving through here.
39:00Curious about what might be down there, the team decides to investigate.
39:04After this fracture took place.
39:05Ready?
39:06Okay.
39:07Yeah, I'm ready.
39:12Without taking time to dig, there's only one way to see if anything lies beneath the sands in the sinkhole.
39:19Started.
39:20Okay, we're on.
39:23A device called the red sled can transmit radar impulses to uncover variations in density far below the surface.
39:31Thirty feet down, the radar detects the outline of an ancient well.
39:38The first one is coming down, right?
39:39Yeah.
39:40It's coming down here.
39:41Good.
39:48You see, that's all this sand fill which is sitting in here.
39:52Three meters.
39:55Six meters.
39:58And nine.
39:59That's it.
40:01The team also discovers some ruins that fell into the sinkhole, perhaps during an earthquake.
40:06Perhaps during an earthquake.
40:08And there is…
40:09Great punkt, which is a service.
40:12Yes…
40:15But when she gets shores, there Carta tannedא.
40:20Yuriy Zarens ponders the possibilities.
40:35Frankly, I didn't know what we had.
40:37If this was Ubar, it seems to me that someone would have figured that out a long time ago.
40:43My first thought was that this was just a medieval site, maybe a stop on the road to Mecca.
40:49But of course, that would have been far too recent to fit the Ubar legend.
40:53Well, there was one thing we could do, stop speculating and start digging.
41:08Willing to give it a try, the team decides to excavate the ridge extending east from the existing ruins.
41:18A group of assistant archaeologists and students join them from southwest Missouri State, Yuriy Zarens University.
41:29It's a fragment of Persian pottery.
41:50In hopes of finding more, every bit of rubble, dirt and sand is carefully screened.
42:07Anything interesting?
42:12Shesher slowly begins to yield up its past.
42:16These are potsherds from ancient Greece.
42:31And these are from Syria, dating back to 500 B.C.
42:35From the artifacts found in the first few days, it becomes clear that Shesher is much more than a medieval site.
42:45It isn't 500 years old.
42:48It's 5,000 years old.
42:50Not only is there pottery imported from distant lands, but also distinctive pieces made by the people of Aad.
42:59So Shesher was definitely an ancient site.
43:09But was it a settlement of consequence?
43:11That's really good plaster work there.
43:13The answer comes in the second week of digging, when the foundation of a wall takes an unexpected curve.
43:25It comes off clean.
43:27It's the base of a horseshoe tower.
43:30So, it's got to make kind of a semicircle.
43:33Here's our rock, and then there's that wall that comes around there, and we've got some small rocks here.
43:40It'll join up.
43:41It comes around there.
43:43But it looks great.
43:45Okay, Rick, so...
43:46A tower.
43:48Think about that.
43:49You don't just build one in the middle of nowhere.
43:51You have a wall here, then a tower.
43:54Then you're going to have more wall, more towers.
43:57All protecting a large enclosed structure.
44:01A fortress.
44:02That'll look real good, so...
44:03I'd say take it out like this, like that, so we can get out to here, and then we'll have it.
44:10Come on in, Nick.
44:14Come on up, brother.
44:16Come from right.
44:18For every significant find, a photograph is taken for later reference.
44:24There you are.
44:25Got it?
44:26Okay.
44:27All righty.
44:27Steady yourself.
44:33Set on a sturdy stone foundation, the mud brick tower would have risen as high as 30 feet.
44:40But what's a tower doing at Shishir?
44:47That evening, Nick Clapp returns to the ancient sources that first inspired him.
44:53In most translations of the Quran, Ubar is called the city of pillars, whose like has not been seen in the entire land.
45:03But some translations describe it as a city of towers.
45:06But some translations describe it as a city of towers.
45:08Yuri's errand students are now joined by dozens of volunteers who have heard of the site's promise, and who have come to help dig.
45:29For them and the people of Shishir, there's a growing sense of anticipation.
45:34It's now clear that the outer wall continues on to another tower, turns and passes a third, then crosses a gap to a fourth.
45:56As the pattern of the settlement is uncovered, the team is even able to predict the location of buried walls.
46:22So what we're going to have you do is help out right in here, clear off the material here, see if we can find that continuation of the wall, all right?
46:33And here is our zero point.
46:37An AT is here.
46:38All right, so you ought to have the wall there somewhere, right?
46:40All right.
46:41Okay, so use your trowel, not your fingers.
46:43Why is that?
46:44Well, it looks like it's got glass sometimes.
46:46The flint's real sharp.
46:47You don't want to touch your hands.
46:48Yeah, you'll find glass there.
46:49There you go.
46:50Ah, look at this.
46:51Don't move that.
46:53Just leave that.
46:53You don't think this is a definite goer?
46:55Yeah, any big rock, just leave.
46:57You never know what the heck they did.
46:59Sometimes they'll surprise you if they put a tower in or something.
47:01Yeah.
47:02What you have is you removed all the rocks of the tower, then I get mad.
47:04Yeah, I would.
47:05See?
47:06No.
47:06After weeks of digging, Zarens is finally willing to make an educated guess.
47:14Well, you certainly couldn't ask for a better crew or a better site for that matter.
47:18But was this really Ubar?
47:21Someday, if we're lucky, we'll find an inscription that says, yes, this is the place.
47:26But short of that, the site's age, the way it's laid out, even its destruction are a match
47:32for its legend.
47:34Hold it steady right there.
47:36We'll find you.
47:37As the work continues, his confidence grows that the lost city has indeed been found.
47:46Hold it right there.
47:48A volunteer finds an artifact in the ruins of what may have been a citadel, the stronghold
48:08of the city.
48:09So the period, that'd be South Arabic period, time of Christ, something like that.
48:15It's really nice.
48:17Beautiful.
48:19It's the handle of an oil lamp, used when Ubar was at its height.
48:24With the aid of the Omani Air Force, Zarens can now survey the entire site from the air.
48:38In Ubar's day, the cavern below must have been filled with water.
48:57There's no question that water was key here.
49:00In this desert, Ubar could have been hidden anywhere in, say, 50,000 square miles.
49:04But it's here because there's water, permanent water.
49:08I'd be willing to lay odds that this is the only major site in the whole area.
49:16With water, the fortress would have made a fitting home for a king like Shadad.
49:21It would have had a processing and storage facility for the frankincense, and high, thick walls to
49:27withstand a siege.
49:34But Ubar was far more than a fortress.
49:40It would have been surrounded by thousands of tents, set in a vast oasis.
49:48Shadad's imitation of paradise now turned to sand.
49:52To the northeast, there are remnants of campsites where most people lived.
50:06Here, frankincense caravans would have stopped and pitched their tents, resting up for the
50:11grueling trek across the Rue Balcali.
50:13A few stunted trees are ghostly reminders of palm groves, orchards, and fertile fields.
50:28Around these fire pits, there was once talk of distant trade, and gossip of the goings-on
50:35in Ubar's central market, a short distance away.
50:38For untold generations, desert lore had preserved the tale of Ubar.
50:59And yet it was never suspected that the fabled city lay hidden beneath their feet.
51:04But this we know, the Sheikh declares, the people of Aad were corrupt.
51:12It's in the Koran.
51:13For their sins upon the land, God punished them.
51:19A great wind was said to herald the end.
51:34This is how Ubar may have looked on its last day.
51:44About 150 people would have lived within the fortress walls.
51:49Family and servants of the king.
51:53Administrators and record keepers of the frankincense trade.
51:56But as legend has it, when the people of Aad refused to heed the word of God, King Shaddad's
52:04world was doomed to crumble in the great cataclysm.
52:16God's justice was swift and sure.
52:18God's justice Whoa!
52:22God!
52:45Lord, thank you.
52:46And so it was Ubar's myth that led the way to the truth.
52:51Schooled in the Quran, these children know all about the price of Shaddad's wickedness.
52:58But now they will also know about an ancient city that played a key role in a vast network of trade,
53:06until an earthquake destroyed it.
53:11Everything is gone now, Zarens explains.
53:16What happened to the towers? They fell down.
53:19Then everything else fell down too.
53:24Several more seasons of digging have taken place since the team first arrived.
53:33But there is still much to be done.
53:37Tons of sand and rubble must be sifted and removed, and artifacts analyzed.
53:45But there is great hope of further discovery, as a forgotten people and their lost city take their rightful place in history.
53:55After nearly 2,000 years, the desert is giving up its secrets at last.
54:08Learn more about the space age techniques that archaeologists use to find and reveal hidden ruins.
54:34Head for NOVA's website at pbs.org.
54:38To order this show for $19.95 plus shipping and handling, call 1-800-255-9424.
54:59And to learn more about how science can reveal the truth and solve the mysteries of our world,
55:05ask about our many other NOVA videos.
55:14Next time on NOVA,
55:16is it possible to fly around the world in a balloon?
55:19These men think so,
55:21but they know it won't be easy.
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55:27Three men and a balloon.
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