In Jordan, a ‘stunning’ discovery under Petra’s ancient stone
nytimes.com73 points by aguaviva 2 days ago
73 points by aguaviva 2 days ago
For anyone thinking of visitng Petra, try and allow more than a couple of hours. When we went it was for two days, going in and out each day. A lot of people just go down the entry canyon, take a look at the Treasury (the bit in Indiana Jones) and head back. But the site itself is much larger. If you are up for a decent walk there are parts that I thought were much more impressive and interesting up the hills. Some of the scenary around there is stunning.
Also, if you can do down in the evening, that's great too.
Jordan as a whole was a really interesting place to visit.
For those who cannot travel, the Fall of Civilizations episode 15. The Nabataeans - The Final Days Of Petra has stunning visuals in 4K
If you go, I can't recommended enough to hike in to Petra from Little Petra (Siq al-Barid). Little Petra is a small caravan stop about 8km away. The hike brings you in through the backside of Petra near the Monastery.
Also explore up the stairs carved in the rocks in Petra. They're somewhat hidden and most tourists do not venture up them. They lead to a sort of rock maze on top of the cliffs overlooking Petra with incredible views. I accidentally got lost up there at dusk and ended up hiking out the Al Siq canyon alone in the dark. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The stars and subtle desert night sounds felt like I had entered a time machine. One of those deeply transformative experiences that only occurs when venturing off the beaten path. Fortunately, the guards at the entrance were cool with my accidental trespassing.
Machu Picchu is like this. If you take the 3 day hike up the mountain to get there, you see some pretty awesome ruins. I did this in the early 90's and I'm sure the routes / ability has changed by now, but it was really cool back then.
Angkor Wat is the main attraction but it also has interesting nearby ruins as well. Rent a motorbike and get lost on the farming backroads, google maps works pretty well.
I did the 3 day hike about 8 years ago and I remember the ruins along the way where spectacular mainly due to there being no crowds. Holds a special place in my heart.
Is it deep inside? I always wondered about the actual site from IJ. Or is it just a front facade?
For some reason, slow people always lie under the big boulder, shaped like mail stamps. Never over the rock.
I always try and build Petra in my desert city before the AI in Civ 6!
That ground penetrating radar really delivers but what is the stunning part?
Finding 12 ancient skeletons in a place that was not previously known as a tomb is pretty stunning. Imagine if you found 12 bodies under your neighborhood bank- people would freak out, and it's not nearly as old as the Petra Treasury.
Many places we know now as tombs weren't known as such before, that is untill some skeletons were found.
What makes it unusual was this place was very well known as a treasury beforehand and has been a popular tourist attraction for over 100 years.
Not to get all Indiana Jonesy about it, but 12 skeletons? From right around year 0? And they even show a picture of a weathered, ceramic cup?
The article plays it straight, but I'm pretty sure this = Holy Grail confirmed.
The cup they show isn't dated; it just says, "An ancient ceramic item discovered at the Treasury site". It's not even clear the cup was discovered during this particular expedition, or where it was found. It could be newer or older, and need not be related to the 12 skeletons.
If the 12 apostles existed, it seems unlikely that they'd all be buried in the same place, in what may have been a "prestigious" tomb. Jesus isn't exactly described as a particularly popular figure in his time when it came to the authorities, and I would expect the 12 apostles would have died at different times, in different places, and wouldn't have been buried together.
The time range is pushing it, too: between 400 BCE and 106 CE, though that's just the roughest of estimates based on when the city was founded and when it was annexed by the Romans, not based on any inspection of the remains. It feels more likely that this tomb was built, used, and sealed up well before Jesus and the disciples/apostles supposedly lived.
Even if we assume the religious fairy tales are true, this doesn't pass the smell test: it's vanishingly unlikely that these are the remains of those men, or that any of this is related to the Holy Grail mythology.
They are not all buried in the same place. Mark is famously in Venice.
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/where-are-the-12-apostles-no...
Peter is apparently underneath the Vatican. I’m not religious but I love history - they run a tour under the current city and it’s really quite cool if you’re into that sort of thing
Isn't it thought that Peter never went to Rome? Did they collect his remains and move them?
Peter and Paul founded the church of Rome -- an inscription was found in the necropolis in proximity to a bone box during the excavations in Saint Peter's in 1950 as I recall -- "Peter is here".
It was always a point made from very early times that Rome was the church of Peter. As opposed to places like Alexandria for example whose status came from it being the see of a disciple of Peter.
Something else I seem to recall is that one of the leg bones was different -- what would be expected from a Galilean fisherman always putting one leg on the side of a boat to haul in a fishing net.
The final resting place of a number of Apostles is more or less known -- Ss Simon and Jude are in Saint Peter's, Saint Paul is buried in Saint Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, Saint James the Greater is at Compostella in Spain, Saint Bartholomew is in a church on an island in the Tiber in Rome, Saints Philip and James the Lesser have their own church in Rome I think.
Catholic tradition has always held that Peter moved to Rome, taught there as a teacher, and then died there.
Other Christian circles, and a large swathe of historians, disagree on this front. However, it is one of the founding points of the Petrine Primacy, or the reason that Saint Peter is seen as the First Pope of the Catholic Church.
Any history touted by the Church should be taken with a grain of salt. There are plenty of examples of how they manipulated things in their favor, and are prime examples of history written by the winner theory
Doubting Thomas went to India:
Christianity is India's third-largest religion with about 26 million adherents, making up 2.3 percent of the population as of the 2011 census.[1] The written records of St Thomas Christians mention that Christianity was introduced to the Indian subcontinent by Thomas the Apostle, who sailed to the Malabar region (present-day Kerala) in 52 AD.
the 12 apostles existed, not as a one-off, but a common practice. there is numerological signifigance to 12, that precedes christianity.
The cup they show isn't even a cup. It looks more like the top part of a broken bottle, photographed upside down. The narrow end looks too narrow for a cup's base, it would not be very stable.
I think it was Martin Luther who said something to the effect that of the 12 apostles, 19 are buried in Germany.
Tell me you missed the Indiana Jones joke without telling me you missed the Indiana Jones joke.
The ending of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade used Petra as the outside shot for the ancient temple where the story ended.
The article says the skeletons date to 400-100 BC, so, no. Year 0 doesn't exist (1 BC is followed directly by AD 1), and the holy grail would have to date from AD 33 or so, because Jesus didn't die in the year of his birth.
> The article says the skeletons date to 400-100 BC...and the holy grail would have to date from AD 33 or so
It says "between 400 B.C. and A.D. 106". That encompasses all relevant dates.
How accurately can skeletons be dated? Within 100 years? 10 years? a year?
They didn't actually date the skeletons, because they haven't excavated the site to physically examine them. The time range given by the article is just from the date the city was founded, until it was annexed by the Romans.
It's a pretty safe assumption that they were buried there before the Roman annexation. My guess would be they were buried much closer to 400 BC than to AD 106.
> And they even show a picture of a weathered, ceramic cup
A cup that looks a _lot_ like the grail prop from the film.
Year 0? I thought Petra was much much older than that.
If year 0 is correct, these people were buried long after Petra was a bustling city then?
Yeah that bit doesn't pass the smell test. Petra had been around for about 400 years by the time Jesus supposedly held his last supper.
It seems much more likely that these 12 skeletons date back to the earlier days of the city.
(Nitpick: there was no year 0; 1 BC goes right into AD 1. And Jesus' supposed death was around AD 33, not AD 1. Sometimes people think "AD" means "After his Death", but it's really "Anno Domini", or "the year of the/our Lord", when he was supposedly born.)
Alternatively we can parse AD as "Advancing Dates" and BC as "Backward Counting"
In movie reality, this is definitely the Holy Grail. In real reality (for those not familiar), the grail is a legend invented in the middle ages.