all sport voice-over: this is bbc news. we will have the headlines for you at the top of the hour, which is straight after this programme. i m alice morrison, an adventurer and writer. i ve cycled across africa and run across the sahara. now i m on the trail of a mysterious and forgotten arabian civilisation the nabataeans. are we standing in the birthplace of written arabic? i think i would say that, yes. they were nomads who forged a rich civilisation here in the harsh desert conditions of western arabia from the fourth century bce. they ruled for around three centuries until they were swallowed up by the roman empire. now all that s left are the enigmatic remains of their great desert cities of petra and hegra in modern dayjordan and saudi arabia. and this is where i have come to explore, to find out how they survived and thrived here, who they were, and even what they looked like. i want to search for clues about their world. i ll investigate their ancient sites, delvin
Of the nabataea ns. on the site of the lost second city of hegra, french archaeologist katia schaller has brought me to a viewpoint to explain what we can deduce from this choice of location. this place has the best view of the entire city, but it s also overlooking the trade routes, right? from here you would have seen the caravans full of spices and frankincense, but you also had a very good view of the jabal ithlib. this is where all the religious activities are happening. and you can see here too, like, the deep relationship between the city and the oasis. the city is strategically set right here because you would have had the wadi flowing, the writing near the water. and that s where we know that the earliest occupation would have been and the closest knit residential units would have been around this part of the city. as with petra in the north, a deep understanding of the geography of the desert was one of the elements that allowed the nabataeans to thrive here. but over the mil
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Where breathtaking vistas are matched by holistic wellbeing. The mystical and ancient land of AlUla has quickly become a bucket list destination. Just a