How a British explorer uncovered a traveler from the stars instead of discovering an ancient lost Arabian city
London: “The day the sands caught fire,” in the words of a 1998 report published in Scientific American.
The sand in question was in an isolated location in Saudi Arabia’s Rub al-Khali, or Empty Quarter. The fire, which melted half a square kilometer of desert and turned it into black glass, fell from the sky in one of the most dramatic meteor showers the planet has ever seen.
Geologists continue to debate exactly when the so-called Weber meteorite fell to Earth – theories range from 450 to 6,400 years ago. However, we can be almost certain that this ancient traveler originated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, carrying fragments of celestial bodies that formed in the early days of our solar system.
After orbiting the Sun for millions of years, it eventually crashed into the Earth’s atmosphere at a speed of 60,000 kilometers per hour, before falling to Earth in several fiery fragments.
However, it was a more practical secret that, 90 years ago, led intrepid British explorer Harry St. John Philby to the edge of two pits in the desert, so impressive that, at first, he mistook them for mouths. an extinct volcano. He was following the legend of an ancient lost city in the heart of the sand, which was described in the Quran as having been destroyed by God for rejecting the warnings of the prophet Hud.
In 1930 and 1931, British explorer Bertram Thomas became the first Westerner to cross the Empty Quarter. In his 1932 book, “Arabia Felix”, he described how his Bedouin guide had shown him “a well-worn track, about a hundred yards in cross-section, carved into the ground”.
They moved north across the sands at the southern end of the vast desert. This, the guides told Thomas, was “the road of salvation … a great city, our forefathers have told us, that existed from time immemorial, a city rich in treasure … it is now buried under the sands”. “
Thomas marked the position of the ancient road on his map, intending to return but never returned.
Archaeologist-turned-soldier TE Lawrence – known to the world as Lawrence of Arabia, who helped spark the Arab Revolt in the Hejaz during World War I – searches by airship for this “Atlantis of the Sands” planned to do. As he said However, he died as a result of a motorcycle accident in England in 1935 before he could act on them.
Philby was similarly intrigued by the stories of the lost city. They followed the clues left by Thomas, and the directions of their own Bedouin guides, to what they called Wabar – but which at first confusingly also referred to them as al-Hadida or “the place of the iron”. was.
Initially, Philby – who had been given permission to mount his own expedition by King Abdulaziz, for whom he had become a trusted advisor – was convinced that he had found the ancient city he sought, which was said to be It was said to have been founded by the famous king Shaddad ibn. advertisement.
Bedouin guides took British explorer Harry St John Philby to a place called al-Hadida or ‘the place of iron’. (Archives / Getty)
“I got my first glimpse of Weber—a thin low line of ruins riding on a wave of yellow sand,” he wrote in his 1933 book “The Empty Quarter.”
“Leaving my companions to pitch the tent and prepare my meal before sunset, I went up to the summit of a low mound of the ridge to survey the general view before dark… I reached the summit and at that moment In, fathoms the legend of Waber.
“I looked not at the ruins of an ancient city, but at the mouth of a volcano, whose twin craters, half filled with flowing sand, side by side were surrounded by lava and lava that spewed from the bowels of the earth … I did not I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I was strangely captivated by the scene that had shattered years of dreams.
Their guides, still convinced they had discovered the cursed ancient city, dug in the sand for treasure and “came to me with heaps of lava and little bits of rusted iron and little shiny black pellets which they made into pearls”. Took ‘The women of Aad, turned black in the fire that consumed them along with their master.’
In fact, the “pearls” were impressive: tiny, dark, glassy beads formed from the heat of the burning meteorite when it crashed into the sand.
Gazing around to pick up further evidence of the twin craters and their glassy walls, and scattered pieces of alien metal, it finally dawned on Philby that this was not a volcano, nor a lost city, but a Was the site of a giant meteorite.
“It may indeed be the Waber of which Badawin speaks,” a dismayed Philby told his guides, “but it is the work of God, not of man.”
Philby sent a piece of metal from the site to the British Museum for analysis. It was found to be an alloy of iron and nickel, which is commonly found in meteorites. The museum report concluded that “the kinetic energy of a large mass of iron traveling at high velocity was suddenly converted into heat, vaporizing a large part of the meteorite and part of the Earth’s crust, creating a violent gaseous explosion”. The explosion occurred, leaving behind a crater and remnants of the meteorite.
The remains of the meteorite on display. (Archive, Getty Images)
“The material collected at Weber Crater provides clear evidence that very high temperatures prevailed: the desert sand was not only molten, yielding the silica-glass, but was also boiled and vaporized. The meteoritic iron also vaporized in large part.” was dispersed, later condensed as a fine drizzle.
Others would follow in Philby’s footsteps. In 1937 the first of several expeditions by Aramco geologists visited the site. They were disappointed not to find a lump of iron, which according to local rumor was the size of a camel.
However, over time, this “camel” would be found, uncovered by winds that blew away the sand that buried it. In 1966, a team from Aramco found the largest of the two exposed fragments of the meteorite, which weighed more than 2,000 kg.
It was taken to the Aramco headquarters in Dhahran and later displayed at King Saud University in Riyadh. Today it can be seen in the National Museum of Saudi Arabia in the capital.
For the lost city of Ubar, the best candidate that has emerged to date is not in the Empty Quarter, but about 500 kilometers to the south, near the remote village of Shisar in Oman’s Dhofar province.
The site was identified in 1992 through analysis of radar imagery collected by the spacecraft Endeavour, followed by a ground expedition led by British explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes, whose book “Atlantis of the Sands” chronicles his 24-year search. There is accounting. to the lost city.
As NASA reported in 1999, “archaeologists believe that Ubar existed from about 2800 BCE to about 300 CE and was a remote desert outpost where caravans gathered to transport frankincense across the desert.” went.”
Frustratingly for lovers of the romantic legend, it seems that Ubar was destroyed not by the wrath of a god but by evil planning. Archaeologists who investigated the site in 1992 believe that the city was built over a large cave and abandoned when it eventually collapsed into a giant sinkhole.