![]() "There's probably a grain of truth to them. "We're talking about preliterate mythologies of Arabs," says Donald Whitcomb, a University of Chicago archeologist. "We started with this hopeless myth and then found seeds of truth and then ultimately found the reality behind the myth." who built Ubar as an 'imitation of paradise'," says Clapp. "Eight towers once guarded a complex of storerooms, living areas, an administrative center, and possibly the majlis of Shaddad ibn Ad. ![]() The first artifacts from the site include Roman, Greek, Chinese, Egyptian and Syrian pottery shards, the latter dating from 2800 B.C. Outside the walls archeologists found more than 40 campsites- consistent with classical accounts of vast camel caravans assembled at Ubar. An octagonal, walled fortress emerged from the desert. When digging finally began late last year, the first finds were astonishing. In 1981, a California dreamer happened on the reference in Thomas's 1932 memoir, "Arabia Felix." Filmmaker Nicholas Clapp combed the texts, enlisted satellite experts in the search, teamed up with British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and finally embarked on a three-month expedition. Lawrence put it? A British explorer, Bertram Thomas, once was told by an Omani Bedouin: "Look, sahib, the road to Ubar," but he never found the lost city. Were they the same city-an "Atlantis of the sands," as T. The Arabian Nights gives specific clues to the site of a vast entrepot called Ubar that thrived on the ancient trade in frankincense. In the second century, the Alexandrian geographer Claudius Ptolemy wrote about Omanum Emporium-The Omani Marketplace-which he said lay in the Arabian Peninsula's Empty Quarter. ![]() The Koran describes how the earth swallowed up a sumptuous but decadent "city of towers" called Iram.
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