Tech UPTechnologyThe Atlantis of the sands

The Atlantis of the sands

To the south of the Arabian Peninsula is the ar-Rub Al-Jali desert, which occupies an area larger than the Iberian Peninsula and is one of the richest regions in oil on the planet. There the dunes exceed 300 meters, in summer the temperature exceeds 55º C at noon and through whose interior not even the Bedouins dare to travel. His name means the empty region. In February 2006 a team of scientists explored it under the auspices of the Saudi Geological Survey, finding different types of fossils and meteorites. Incredibly, the desert is not as empty as once believed: scientists found 31 species of plants and 24 species of birds, as well as spiders and rodents.

It hasn’t always been this inhospitable. Before 300 BC It was crossed by caravans trading in olibanum or frankincense , an aromatic resin used by Somalis as chewing gum after meals. According to Christian legend, the incense that the Magi brought to the baby Jesus was actually frankincense. According to tradition, the city of Iram or Ubar, also known as the City of a Thousand Pillars, was located on this incense route that went from India to Egypt, and whose existence is only attested to by the fantastic stories that the Bedouins tell each other. the night in the oases.

It is supposed to have existed from 3000 BC to the first century AD According to legend, it grew rich through trade with the coastal cities of the Middle East and Europe. In the Koran it is said that Iram was inhabited by the ‘Ad, a tribe whose origin dates back to the great-grandsons of Noah and who inhabited eastern Yemen and western Oman. The people of ‘Ad eventually became a kingdom that existed from 10th BC to 2nd AD

The fate of the city of Iram was similar to that of Sodom and Gomorrah . According to the Koran, the ‘Ad were a people who “built a monument on each hill” and their members “made these constructions with the idea of being immortal”. The prophet Hud (identified by some with a minor character in the book of Genesis, Heber) was sent to them to warn them of the evil path they were taking: “Fear God, therefore, and obey me! You fear the One who has provided you with what you know: of flocks and male children, of gardens and fountains! I fear for you the punishment of a terrible day!” They refused to obey on the grounds that they were only doing “what the ancients used to do.” In One Thousand and One Nights – where Iram’s name appears on different occasions, such as in the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor – he reveals the name of his king: Shaddad, who ignored Hud’s warnings. God punished the city by burying it under the sand .

The region where the ‘Ad is supposed to have inhabited was described by Claudius Ptolemy in his book Geography and called it Ubar, hence the lost city has received this name over time. Where the story ends, the legend begins, which takes on increasingly fantastic overtones; In this case, the city gained treasures, riches and advanced knowledge over time to the point that the famous Lawrence of Arabia called it “the Atlantis of the sands”.

In 1932 the first westerner to cross this dangerous Arabian desert, Bertram Thomas, explained in his book Arabia Felix how six days from the well at Ahiaur, a seasonal settlement in southwestern Oman, his fellow Arab expedition members pointed out faint markings on his the ground and told him that it was “the path of Ubar”. All the Briton saw was an old camel trail that suggested a caravan route heading north into the empty country. The Arabs told him that it led to a fortified city, full of riches and gardens, which was now buried under the sands. Twenty years later, another British explorer, Wilfred P. Thesiger, heard from his Bedouin friends of the existence of “the lost city of Ad under the sands of Jaihman, little more than a day’s journey to the south” . Since then, Ubar slept the dream of other lands of legend until, in the early 1980s, a group of researchers, eager to solve the enigma, focused the satellites of NASA’s LANDSAT program, designed to observe the Earth’s surface at high resolution, that inhospitable region of the world.

In photos obtained by LANDSAT, scientists Charles Elachi and Ronald Blom of NASA’s famed JPL in Pasadena, California, saw a path littered with footprints almost 100 meters wide and hidden under the sand . The JPL technicians found two types of paths: some modern, because they bordered the dunes, and other older ones, because they passed under them. Combined with photographs taken from the ill-fated space shuttle Challenger and images from France’s SPOT Earth-observing satellites, they were able to identify ancient caravan routes. His reasoning was: where they meet, there could be the remains of a city.

Thus, in 1991, with the help of wealthy businessman Armand Hammer, the expedition was launched in search of Ubar , whose alma mater was multi-award-winning documentary filmmaker Nicholas Clapp, who had done virtually all of the historical research. Along with him, the technicians Blom and Elachi, the adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes -the first person to reach the two poles and cross Antarctica on foot-, the archaeologist Juris Zarins -professor at the Southwest Missouri State University- and the lawyer George Hedges traveled to the Dhofar province in Oman, where they had identified the place where the legendary city could have disappeared. After thoroughly exploring the area, the trail of ancient caravans led them to Ash Sisar’s well. There, under the sand was the 16th century Turkish fort Shis’r , known from the expeditions of Bertram Thomas. But below they found the remains of an even older settlement. The fort had disappeared because the limestone subsoil, hollowed out by the action of the water, sank under its feet, leaving a huge sinkhole as a witness for posterity.

Later excavations brought to light walls and nine towers. The Muslims would see their hearts raised to think that archeology confirmed the story of the destruction of the city of the pillars reflected in their holy Koran. However, it is difficult to see a magnificent city packed into the dimensions of a military fortification . For its part, the team of researchers discovered 20 other settlements a little more than 8 km away, possibly resting places for caravans. The truth is that the remains of recovered pottery confirm that the area was occupied for 5,000 years and had its moment of splendor from the 1st to the 3rd centuries AD The excavation work in Oman and Yemen is trying to reveal what the Incense Route would be, but has been found of the legendary Ubar?

Slaves and Disabled: Forced Medical Test Volunteers

The main problem to carry out medical research is to have willing volunteers for it. And if they come out for free, much better. This is the story of unethical behavior in medical research.

When hyenas lived in the Arctic

These animals crossed from Asia to America through the Bering Bridge during the Ice Age.

How are lightning created?

Summer is synonymous with sun, but also with storms. Who has not contemplated one from the protection that the home gives that electrical display that is lightning?

How global warming will affect astronomy

Astronomical observations around the world will worsen in quality as a result of climate change, according to a new study.

New images of Saturn's rings in stunning detail

New images of Saturn's rings in stunning detail

More