![]() Thomas had spent years unsuccessfully searching the suspected trade routes for Ubar. The impetus for the search arose when Clapp, a lifelong Arabophile, first read about Ubar in “Arabia Felix” by British explorer Bertram Thomas. The neolithic village was apparently located on the banks of a river-long since dried up-and its residents farmed a substantial area.Įven in the time of Ubar, 3,000 years after the neolithic village, rainfall was more plentiful and the well supplied quite large quantities of water, enough to support not only the city itself but also the camel caravans that traversed the forbidding desert.Įxcavations at Ubar and other sites the researchers have identified should provide the first accurate information about the trade in frankincense, one of the first agricultural commodities to become an item of commerce. The researchers have already found evidence that the climate was much different at that time. ![]() In a news conference today at the Huntington Library in San Marino, the researchers will announce that the site excavated over the past two months reveals an unusual eight-sided structure that must have been every bit as magnificent as it was portrayed in legend. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, called it “the Atlantis of the sands” and, like the undersea Atlantis, many scholars doubted that Ubar ever existed. Ubar’s rulers became wealthy and powerful and its residents-according to Islamic legend-so wicked and debauched that eventually God destroyed the city, allowing it to be swallowed up by the restless desert. Used in cremations and religious ceremonies, as well as in perfumes and medicines, frankincense was as valuable as gold. Using a combination of high-tech satellite imagery and old-fashioned literary detective work, they discovered the fortress city buried under the shifting sands of a section of Oman so barren that it is known as the Rub’al Khali or Empty Quarter.īuilt nearly 5,000 years ago, Ubar was a processing and shipping center for frankincense, an aromatic resin grown in the nearby Qara Mountains. The reason why only the ruins of the fort have remained can be explained by the fact that people probably lived in tents at the time, and it was not uncommon for a fort to be the only permanent structure of a city.The fabled lost city of Ubar, celebrated in both the Koran and “A Thousand and One Arabian Nights” as the center of the lucrative frankincense trade for 3,000 years before the birth of Christ, has been found by a Los Angeles-based team of amateur and professional archeologists. At the deepest end of the sinkhole, a tunnel has been built that leads farther down underground, where the remains of sunken walls can be found. Other parts have sunk lower, but some are still clearly visible. Sections of the fort still stand at the edge of the sinkhole and can be accessed by visitors. The fort in Shisr, therefore, literally sank into the desert sands. Furthermore, part of this fort collapsed when a sinkhole formed underneath, and several feet of sand eventually covered all the ruins. The ruins suggest there used to be a fort surrounded by eight walls with a tower at each corner, a description that matches the description of the legendary Ubar in ancient documents. Whether or not the ruins called Ubar in Shisr are actually the remains of the legendary Ubar is contested.Īrchaeological excavations suggest this outpost was involved in the incense trade, meaning it may have been a sizable settlement. The ruins found in Shisr are officially named Ubar. This is fertile ground, where legends and archaeological studies plant their seeds for wild speculations to grow.Īccording to one of these speculations, the ruins of Ubar have been found in the village today known as Shisr in Dhofar Region, Oman. It’s even been dubbed the “Atlantis of the Sands.” Ubar and Atlantis have something else in common, too-there’s no unanimous consensus that either ever even existed.įinding the skeleton of a city that perhaps never existed can be a daunting proposition, but explorers and scholars are well aware of the prestige they could gain should they discover the ruins. Ubar is the Arabian equivalent of Atlantis, except that instead of sinking to the bottom of the sea, legend says it disappeared into the desert sands.
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