Discovery Channel Documentary on AlUla Architects of Ancient Arabia Narrator Jeremy Irons

In a remote corner of Saudi Arabia, an international team attempts to solve an ancient mystery. Enigmatic stone structures, thousands of them, scattered across hundreds of kilometres of desolate desert. Who built them? When you see the archaeological sites perched up in places, you wonder, what's the symbolism of that? Saudi Arabia is opening up to research thousands of never before studied ancient sites. This is an area that has had very little archaeological explorations. So we're kind of like explorers, really. They're finding evidence of mysterious prehistoric ritual. We quickly understood that this was something big. Are these massive symbols left by a lost civilisation? Who were the architects of ancient Arabia? Alula, a region in Saudi Arabia's vast north-west. A land of stunning beauty. It was once a thriving crossroads. 2,000 years ago, an advanced civilisation called the Nabateans carved these sandstone tombs. Nearly 100 of them, many over five storeys tall, are spread over ten square kilometres. Remains of an ancient city called Hegra. As early Maya city-states were on the rise in the Americas, and the Han dynasty was building the Silk Road outward from China, here in Alula, 2,000 years ago, the Nabateans built Hegra to help command one of the ancient world's most lucrative trade networks, carrying incense and spices from Arabia to Egypt, Rome and beyond. It's actually a primary communication route that's been used for the spice trade. It's been used for the Hajj during much later periods. People have used this route for a very long time. Over 500 years before the Nabateans, the biblical city of Dardan flourished. The Dardan statues have clear Greek and Egyptian influences. And its language is one of modern Arabic's ancient ancestors. But scattered among these known sites, archaeologists are discovering more here. Traces of civilisation. More ancient than most ever imagined. We're driven by curiosity. I think our species is simply curious about the past. David Kennedy is an aerial archaeologist. He studies ancient features from his preferred view, 500 feet up. These structures are rather perplexing. You want to know what it was about. Why people built it like that. Why they built it there. These unexplained structures form shapes, like circles, pendants, rectangles and even triangles. These are not simply stones that have been heaped up here. They've carefully selected flat stones. They've built them into proper walls. The walls have got a vertical face on them. They've got sharp corners properly laid out. Some of them stretch the length of five football fields. With over 12,000 tonnes of rock. Nearly twice the weight of the Eiffel Tower. And then on this ridge up here you can see there's a rather fine example with a fantastic view from the top here. People who built these things obviously had an eye to the landscape. David's team has catalogued over 12,000 of these sites. It's estimated that over 21,000 are spread across Alula. Who built these structures? And for what purpose? And when? With that combination of sites you've got something that's puzzling. And there are huge numbers of these puzzles in this landscape around here. The aerial survey is part of a much larger investigation. Being led by the Royal Commission for Alula. A Saudi 2030 vision-inspired organisation. Saudi specialists are joined by international teams of archaeologists. Director Rebecca Foote manages researchers exploring over 20,000 square kilometres. It's a huge opportunity but it's a huge challenge as well because there just hasn't been anybody studying this part of the world in such detail. Their mission? Uncover the secrets of these desert monuments. And reveal Alula's role in the story of human civilisation. This is the forgotten corner of the region. It's almost like we're coming in, I wouldn't say with a completely blank piece of paper, but it was a rough sketch. Now we can potentially make a difference in terms of our understanding not just of Saudi Arabia but the wider region. Arabia lies to the south of one of the richest archaeological regions on earth. The Fertile Crescent. Around 10,000 years ago, people here began to farm and domesticate animals like cattle. This era, the Neolithic, led to what we now call the birth of civilisation. This period witnessed so much big changes and it's actually the beginning of the modern way of life. The most well-known ancient structures like the pyramids and Stonehenge came thousands of years later. To the south of the Fertile Crescent, the harsh Arabian desert was thought to play no part in the birth of civilisation. Just because it's a desert, people think it must be empty, there was no one there. The Fertile Crescent has seen so much research over 100 years now but somehow that stopped once you get into the Arabian Peninsula. But archaeologists exploring this new frontier may soon be competing with hundreds of thousands of visitors. Plans are underway to make Alula a global tourist destination. We used to have travellers, pilgrims, caravans, all people who used to pass by Alula. So people are ready to welcome the world. Ahmed Alimam is a local historian. For much of the last century, conservative Saudi Arabia permitted few tourists aside from pilgrims to Mecca. But the kingdom is opening up and embracing sweeping modern reforms. I can see that people start to be aware. We can see the changes happening very fast. Everyone now is curious what's going to happen. Ahmed is on his way to Alula's old town, a traditional mud-brick village with walls dating back to the 13th century. Just a few decades ago, his family lived here. This is my grandfather's house, father of my mother. Even though these homes have no electricity or modern plumbing, old town retained a vibrant community up until the 1980s. For sure it was different. The life was very connected and people were very connected with each other. Today, work is underway to preserve old town and make it part of Alula's wealth of heritage. Of course, we have to do it responsibly. We have something really as a treasure. We should take care of it first and then show it to the world. Old town dates back centuries. But how far back do Alula's other ancient treasures go? So currently we're a few nautical miles to the east of Alula. As we head further east, we start finding it's much more archaeologically dense. Following up on David Kennedy's aerial survey, a field team is deciding which structures to excavate first. The team is headed by husband and wife, archaeologist Melissa Kennedy and team director Hugh Thomas. They're eager to test a theory that the structures may be burial markers. It's actually quite difficult to see what you're looking at. So you have to think, who are these structures supposed to be viewed by? Is it for the deceased person who's looking down from the afterlife or is it perhaps from the gods? Today, Hugh and Mel are targeting a 140 metre long structure It's referred to as a pendant. We're really interested in it because it's one of the largest pendants in the Alula county. What we're aiming to get is potentially some dating evidence. So we obviously have 32 towers in the tail of this pendant. We have to choose, what, two or three from to excavate today? If this is a tomb, it may still hold human remains, artefacts or other vital clues to reveal who built these monuments and why. It looks like you have a defined edge there, some kind of internal chamber. In a remote corner of Saudi Arabia, researchers are investigating a mysterious ancient structure. They think it may contain human remains and other clues to the identity of the builders. A, B, C, D. The team begins to carefully remove stone by hand. There's no evidence of tool use here. The naturally flat stones are perfect building blocks. There are thousands upon thousands of tonnes of stone that are coming into these structures. It's not just built by a family. There are communities coming together. And after a few hours, their efforts yield... nothing. My tower tomb looks like it's just full of rock. It doesn't look like there's any hollow space or an internal chamber. Them's the brakes. The team soon reaches the impenetrable surface bedrock. The tower is empty. No artefacts. No remains. Just rock. So I'm thinking of basically shutting down mine. Nothing's coming out of the sieves. No signs of human remains at all. The empty towers are puzzling. Evidence may have been degraded by time and weather. Or even removed by looters. It's also possible these aren't grave sites after all. The team must now re-evaluate their theories. But to Hugh, this is still progress. It is frustrating to be an archaeologist sometimes. Because I always describe it like putting a puzzle together. You don't have the box lid. That's been thrown out long ago. And you might get a little snapshot of a corner over here and a side over there. And you've got to try and fill in the rest of that puzzle with your own theories. Archaeologists piece together the past by studying evidence left behind by ancient peoples. But the collective memory of living people also holds vital clues. The Bedouin are a nomadic people that have called the deserts of the Near East home for at least 2,000 years. Ali Bahir's family has lived in Alula for generations. The recent influx of outsiders has not gone unnoticed. They see Alula as a place of interest to everyone. To all the countries of the world. These monuments are now valuable. They are a change for the better. God bless you. The Bedouins have many stories concerning these enigmatic monuments. They believe them to be far older than Hegra, Dadaan, or any of the other civilizations that once called Alula home. This is the biggest one I've ever seen. If these stories are true, it would make the desert monuments Alula's oldest signs of civilization. But exactly how old remains elusive. This looks to me like part of the same basic building tradition. Yeah. Jamie Quartermain leads another team documenting these sites. Look how well built those facades are. I think we might have had a chamber in here. Today they're exploring a pendant monument. But instead of excavating, they're using non-invasive technology. I'm pretty well ready to launch. Jamie's expertise is creating three-dimensional digital models of ancient sites. What we're doing is providing systematic coverage across the whole of the area. We're taking photographs every couple of seconds. Which we can then combine all of the photographs. So we end up with an accurate three-dimensional model of the whole land surface. These models are an ideal tool for off-site analysis. Especially here in Alula, with over 21,000 sites. The prospect of going into almost untouched oncological landscape was probably one of the most exciting things in my life. And as we've been concentrating, working on the landscape, we see more and more of the monuments coming up. We start beginning to see a much wider and much more important picture. That picture may start with this structure. They're called mustatil. The Arabic word for rectangle. The largest stretch more than five football fields. They may be the oldest of the desert monuments. Perhaps the earliest design. The team made a key discovery about the mustatil. Other structures were sometimes built directly over them. But never the other way around. Exactly it indicated the mustatil were earlier. But whether they were 10 years earlier, 20 years earlier, or 2,000 years earlier, is what is only now coming to the fore. To test this theory that the mustatils are Alula's most ancient structure, archaeologist Wael Abouazizeh leads the excavation team. For me it was really an amazing opportunity. As an archaeological project, it's huge. Things go very fast and we're discovering a lot of things. So it's slightly overwhelming the quantity of archaeology that we're finding here. The mustatil's outer walls seem to enclose a large inner courtyard. Perhaps a space for social gathering. When you work on these, you tend to try to understand how the social groups were composed. How many people were involved in the construction of a mustatil? How long did it take them to construct this? They could be anything. They could be burials, they could be temples. To find answers, Wael must decide which mustatil to excavate first. There are hundreds to choose from. The one he selects surprises many team members. It's highly degraded and barely recognisable. When I first came here, to be honest with you, I was thinking, really, really, wait a minute, perhaps not. Almost dismissed it. Have fun. Bye bye. Have a nice day. It did not look substantial. It's a risky decision. Choose wrong and precious weeks could be wasted digging and finding nothing. But Wael has a hunch. This mustatil is built right up against a prominent rock outcrop. Presumably an intentional choice by the builders. The presence of the outcrop was probably something that had a meaning for them. Wael's team begins by carefully excavating the ground directly below the outcrop. Slowly, what at first appears to be loose piles of rock begins to reveal a complex labyrinth of chambers. So we are still in the very early stage, but already some structural remains start to appear. There is something going on here. And then, after weeks of meticulous work, ancient charcoal. There was a fire here. A man-made fire. Charcoal is ideal for radiocarbon dating. Hard evidence that might finally reveal the age of these structures. But the ancient fire turns out to be just the beginning of an even more dramatic discovery. In a distant corner of Saudi Arabia, archaeologist Wael Abu Azizeh and his team have discovered ancient charcoal. Evidence they hope will help them date a mysterious desert structure called a mustatil. And what is also exciting is the very good preservation state of these charcoals. It's like it's just been taken from your barbecue, except that these charcoals are very old. It's also a tantalizing clue about the function of the mustatil. Wael uncovers two fire hearths in what appears to be an enclosed chamber. Is it some kind of altar? And we are now working on clearing the inside of this chamber to try to understand what was the function of it. So we're wondering what were they doing here in this specific area, which obviously seemed very, very special. The evidence is beginning to suggest the mustatil served a ceremonial purpose. So it gives us the impression that these structures were involved in the ritual beliefs of the people at that time. Meanwhile, after their disappointment at the looted pendant, Hugh and Mel continue their search for evidence that some monuments mark ancient grave sites. So today we're driving up to the west of Al Ula, and we're going to a site that's called the Standing Stone Circle site, which is a type of structure which we know very little about. And we're hoping to excavate some of the structures surrounding these Standing Stone Circles that we think may be undisturbed. I'm fascinated by why they build these things. These stones weigh hundreds of kilos. You know, it takes a lot of effort to build that. So, yeah, the question is why? The team gets to work. And this time, their perseverance pays off. Look at the color of it. Look at it. Bang it. And now we're in this rubbly filth. And inside that, you can see that we're starting to get fragments of bone. The first finds are animal bone. We've got part of a vertebrae. Possibly lumber. Human bone. We put that in the finds bag. So finding bone here tells us that we're really close to a burial. It's now clear. Among these monuments are tombs. The full discovery is assembled back at the team's base camp. How many fragments of bone did we find? We collected over 1,500 fragments. So there's a minimum of six adults in that site. Even more significant are the dating results. This grave has given us a radiocarbon date of 3,900 BC. So that's about 6,000 years old. 6,000 years ago. A few thousand years after the emergence of farming. Civilizations in the fertile crescent were building large-scale structures. But this evidence indicates early builders were already here in Arabia. These bones may be evidence of a never-before-seen chapter in human history. I think the main reason I do archaeology is because I love thinking about people in antiquity. And so the more we excavate, the more I can kind of come up with those stories in my mind. Hugh and Mel's discovery deepens Alula's historic significance. And makes safeguarding the ancient sites a more vital challenge. And with tourism ramping up, the pressure is mounting. Alula is being unveiled on the global stage with world-class festivals, new infrastructure, resorts and attractions. An ambitious plan will turn the entire 20,000-kilometre region into a living museum. To protect Alula's pristine historic landscape, a new program is empowering locals to be stewards of the land. It's called Hamaya. Now we are here just to raise the awareness of locals from Alula to protect their lands, to protect their heritage. Hamaya means guardianship. The program's goal is to inspire young people to help preserve Alula's natural beauty and cultural heritage. Today's excursion to examine ancient rock art will help students connect with Alula's history. When I joined Hamaya, I was very ignorant. I was very excited to get to know the ancient sites in Alula. Aisha Al-Madlabi recently joined the program. She now plans to study the ancient languages found engraved on the rock walls. I was more excited to study the translation of the Lihyanian inscriptions. This is what I want to do. I want to work in this field. Learning to decode these ancient inscriptions will help Aisha become an ambassador for Alula's rich trove of history. But the rock art here goes back far earlier than the written word, and may contain an untold story about the lives of the artists. The exciting thing about rock art is that it captures information that is nowhere else in the archaeological record. Archaeologist Maria Guanine is a rock art expert. She's on her way to a nearby site with carvings believed to be among the most ancient in Alula. I've brought my little sidekick. He's an experienced rock art baby. So I think part of the problem in archaeology is that it's still relatively rare to have children and a career. And so I just have to kind of make it up as I go. There are some limitations on my time and my sleeping patterns. But I think I've found a way that works for me and the baby. Maria is assisted by senior archaeological specialist Dahani Al-Nakhmoud. You can see the head of the human is here. Dahani is part of a growing wave of Saudi female archaeologists. It looks like more than three metres. Oh, is this a big lion? Maria and Dahani wait until sunset for better lighting conditions. Oh, wow. Look! With the artificial light we can now see a lot of the lions more clearly. The controllable light reveals primitive images of hunters surrounding prey. Long-horned ibex. Lions on the prowl. And something unexpected. Cattle. And it turns out there's a whole herd underneath here. Look, these small ones. I didn't see those earlier. Here and there and there. Today, Alula is far too arid to support cattle. So what are they doing in the rock art? To Maria, the engravings were likely made during a period when Alula enjoyed a much wetter climate. 7,000 to 8,000 years ago. 8,000 years ago, when the climate was wetter. There's a period when people are hunting wild animals in the rock art. And then over the top of that, at some point, comes in the cattle herders. What's interesting is that they all have these markings on the body. Is this to do with ownership of a herd? Maria interprets these stripes as marks of ownership. A timestamp for a crucial transition in human history. From hunting to herding. This shift from hunting to controlling animals is hugely exciting to me. What does that do to people's beliefs? What does that do to their human-animal relationships? It's probably the biggest change in human life in our history. I'm going to photograph this little cow and the little calf. Until quite recently, it was presumed that 7,000 to 8,000 years ago, cattle herding was confined to the fertile crescent and a few isolated pockets of the world. But this evidence suggests that some of history's first cattle herders left their mark here. In Alula. There's the cattle that are just disappearing into the crack. But engravings are difficult to date. Without corroborating evidence. Back at Wael's Mustatil excavation, new finds are emerging. So Rahman, one of our workmen, found here this horn, animal horn. It's the horn of a domestic cow. And it turns out to be only the beginning. Over several weeks, the team slowly uncovers more and more. It was slightly overwhelming to deal with all this quantity of material, and we quickly understood that this was something big. Saeed Al Amari makes the key discovery. It was one of the greatest days in the history of my work in the field of artifacts. The work was very difficult in removing the first layer of the surface. When we came down, it was the first surprise. Buried at the deepest level of what appears to be an offering chamber, the team identifies dozens of skull parts, including over 80 horns from multiple species of animals. Saeed noticed the remains were placed with great care and clear intention. The remains are sent back to base camp, where specialists begin piecing together what may be evidence that a major turning point in the history of mankind happened right here, in Alula. Archaeologists exploring mysterious stone structures in Saudi Arabia have discovered a deposit of animal remains. Back at base camp, archaeozoologist Jacqueline Studeau investigates. I saw immediately that it was exceptional, and it's, in my point of view, totally new. The remains were deposited with great care, suggesting an ancient ritual. Such a number is amazing, and it's difficult to understand as being something else than a ritual deposit. Jacqueline is most intrigued by the variety of horns. Most are goats, and there are larger species, the ibex, the gazelle. And there is a third species which is very exceptional. Domesticated cattle. It's the first time cattle have ever been discovered in Alula. And the find supports rock art expert Maria Guanine's theory. The fact that in the excavations they are now finding remains of cattle, coming from a rock art perspective, that was obvious. There is so much symbolism and so much use of these animals. It must be in the archaeological record. Maria believes people herded cattle here thousands of years ago, when Alula's climate was much wetter. Did those early herders also build the structure in which the remains were discovered? The final puzzle piece is a newly arrived carbon dating analysis of the animal remains. The results are stunning. 5200 BCE. Over 7000 years ago. When we actually realised that we had dates 7000 years old, there were an awful lot of very excited and raised voices, when we all realised how significant it was. The date aligns perfectly with Maria's theory. It's amongst the earliest known evidence of cattle domestication in Arabia. And confirms that a major turning point in human history from hunting to herding spread to Alula much earlier than previously known. We have here the earliest evidence of domestication in the region. The environment, the way it looks today, cattle usually do not live in this kind of environment. So it gives also a totally new perception of the environment and the region in which people were living. And that's not all. At over 7000 years old, the Mustadil predates England's Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids by over 2000 years. Making them among the oldest large scale structures in the history of mankind. With the Mustadils, I can't think of another archaeological phenomenon like that anywhere really. Huge structures built over a large geographical distance and hundreds of them. The team has developed strong evidence that over 7000 years ago, a highly advanced society thrived here in Alula. They left behind some of the earliest evidence in human history of monumental construction and animal domestication. And created structures tied to the burial of the dead. But as awe inspiring as these discoveries are, they generate even bigger questions. Saudi Arabia's place in the archaeology of the Middle East and of the wider world is really, it's only beginning to emerge. And we're only beginning to scratch the surface of this. I think right from the outset, when you get involved in archaeology, you realise that you will never answer all the questions. We're in a chain of discovery. We're never going to get to the end, we know that. But what we can do is move that stage forward and that process is exciting. These discoveries are also inspiring a new generation to once again make Alula a global crossroads. Each time we discover or we learn about a civilisation we have here and we think, oh, this is quite old, then archaeologists tell us there is something older and there is something older. This really makes me feel proud. Of course, we have to protect this special thing we have. Research continues, but it's now clear that some of human civilisation's first building blocks were set in place by the architects of ancient Arabia.