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
A world leader in the science of archeoastronomy, currently hard at work elsewhere on the planet. juan, hello. how are you? fine, thank you. it s a pleasure to meet you. i m standing in tomb 21, in hegra. actually, you are now in the tomb which is disorientated to equinox sunset on the one side. but most important, it belongs to a group of tombs that are orientated to the first crescent of the month of nisan, which was the first month of the nabataean calendar. ah, so it must be deliberate. it must be deliberate. we knew that the nabataeans are fantastic builders and architects. yes. so they must have also