The secret lives of the most influential ancient civilization you’ve never heard of

You’ve heard of Petra in Jordan, surely, but do you know much about the people who built it? Did you know the Nabateans also built AlUla in Saudi Arabia? Adventurer, TV presenter and author Alice Morrison who lives in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, is betting you haven’t. But she’ll tell you all about them in her new BBC show, Arabian Adventures: The Secrets of the Nabateans, which debuted in June.

Alice is no stranger to adventure. It began after a mid-life career change when she cycled 12,000 kilometers from Cairo to Cape Town on the Tour D’Afrique, the longest bike race on earth. She’s since taken on the Marathon des Sables, run round Everest, climbed the world’s biggest volcano, Mount Elgon, and crossed Morocco and the Sahara from north to south.

After hiking the whole Jordan Trail and working with archaeologists and researchers to uncover brand-new discoveries about the 2,000-year-old civilization, Morrison, now in her 60s, is more than ready for the Nabateans to have their moment. We caught up with her to find out more about this lesser-known civilization, and where you can get off the beaten track beyond the selfie sticks of Petra.

Adventure.com: So, what are the secrets of the Nabateans?

Alice Morrison: I can’t do any spoilers! No, I mean, we really did learn a huge amount of things. You’ll have to watch the series for the details. One thing I wanted to know was what the women’s role was. We did a huge amount of research, and what we found out was that women had a very, very prominent role. In fact, the royal lineage could pass from woman to woman, unlike our British monarchy until recently.

The Nabateans also built their empire through trade. They weren’t like the Romans, who tried to conquer every single place they came across. And they seemed to live a life of relative luxury. 

What we really look at in the series is the research happening in AlUla [Saudi Arabia]. There are lots of things coming to light, and that’s always exciting—we’re talking 2,000 years ago, and yet we’re only now discovering some of these things.

Do you feel like you now have a picture of what daily life looked like there?

That was what I personally was really interested to discover.

I love the tombs and the monuments, but why do we have these cities of the dead, and yet very little record of the living? They had the precursor to Arabic script. The Egyptians were writing loads of papyrus, and the Romans… you couldn’t stop them. The Romans were writing histories. So why didn’t the Nabateans write? That’s the kind of thing we investigate.

We also found some fascinating details. For example, by looking at the remains of skulls, experts have found out that their teeth were very ground-down. And the reason was that they ate bread, which they milled with an old-fashioned millstone, which allows tiny, tiny grains of rock to fall into your daily bread. So if that’s part of your staple diet, you’re gonna grind your teeth down. And we know this. Don’t you love it?

Just outside of Petra is a place called Little Petra, where travelers often stopped to rest. Do you have a sense for what travel looked like 2,000 years ago?

I like to believe I have a very good sense of what it was like, because I’ve walked across Morocco and the Sahara. I traveled for seven and a half months on foot with camels, which is exactly what these traders would have done. I feel this affinity because walking with caravan camels is a very specific thing. You have to walk at their pace. You have to walk fast until the end of your day, then unload them fast so their backs can rest. You need to have water sources on the routes so you can water your animals, especially if you’re taking goats and sheep along, which they may have, for food.

The other thing we know is they were traders, so they were covering very long distances. Silk, spices, frankincense and myrrh were huge sellers for these salesmen. They’d go all the way from the very south of Arabia, from Yemen all the way up to modern-day Gaza and Alexandria in Egypt. AlUla is a huge oasis with gazillions of palm trees and date palms, and they would have stocked up there. Dates were one of their superfoods, and camel milk was incredibly nutritious and calorific. Travel would have been slow by our modern standards, of course, but it was very organized and progressive.

Petra is probably on most people’s bucket lists. What’s the next Petra?

I personally was very excited to go to AlUla in Saudi Arabia. It is the next Petra. It’s the second city, this kind-of second capital after Petra. So you’ve got the fabulous tombs, but in a completely different desert landscape with these huge pinnacles of rock. Petra can get quite crowded, but in AlUla there’s still relatively few people there. It’s a really exciting new place to explore if you have any interest in history or in desert civilizations.

Petra has become more popular in recent years. Is it too crowded?

Like everywhere in the world, overtourism is an issue, and one that everyone should be cognizant of. But AlUla definitely is not overtouristed. And Petra is an enormous site. Even if you’ve got crowds in the Sikh and in the Treasury—you might have thousands of people in a day going down this narrow channel—there are always places you can be completely alone. Things that you can discover for yourself, or if you take a really good walking guide with you. 

I’d recommend going up the back way into Petra, and coming out at the Monastery—you’ll see so much.

What surprised you most?

I can’t tell you exactly what it was, but it’s fascinating. We had the belief that the Nabateans built their tombs within view of their everyday houses. My assumption was that they were going, “oh, look at that nice tomb. When I die, I’m all right—my tomb’s better than his tomb.” It was very much tied to the material world.

But the latest research by an archaeo-astronomer has just found out that alignment of the tombs is very much governed by the sun and the stars. So whereas I thought they’d been plotting with one eye on their material things, they were actually fully plotting with their spiritual life in mind. This is a brand-new discovery.

How does learning this history influence the way you see the world today?

I think it cheers me up, it makes me feel more optimistic. You see that 2,000 years ago, people were living in what seemed to be a very well-functioning society where people lived reasonable lives. They didn’t have slaves, for example. And if you were lucky enough to be invited to the king’s feasting chamber, he served you, which is actually very similar to Saudi society today, where the host will give you coffee with his own hand.

I find it very comforting to think of people millennia ago living these ordered lives, hopefully happy and reasonably comfortable. The world around us at the moment feels so fragile and so difficult, but it gives me faith that that strand of human history will continue, and that there is hope for our future.

Are the Nabateans your Roman Empire?

They are. Yes, they are. I’ve been working on this for quite a long time. The first time I went to Petra, I was 19, and there were no tourists there, and there were no hotels. You had to sleep in the rocks. So yeah, the Nabateans are my Roman Empire. I do think about them every day. I love it.

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