Stunning Stone Monuments of Petra | National Geographic

less than 1m read

·Nov 11, 2024

Deep within Jordan's desert canyons lies an ancient treasure: the stone city of Petra. This massive hand-carved metropolis provides a window into an ancient civilization. A hidden network of tombs, monuments, and elaborate religious structures are carved into the sandstone cliffs. Believed to have been settled as early as 9000 BC, it developed into a thriving capital of the Nabataean kingdom. This culture ruled much of modern-day Jordan from the 3rd century BC until the 1st century AD.

It's a three-hour drive from the capital city of Amman and 2 hours from the Red Sea port town of Aqaba. Reducing Petra to a single day trip is a common mistake. The site spreads out over a hundred square miles, four times the size of Manhattan. Spend at least one night in Wadi Musa, the closest town to the site, and plan your sightseeing as a series of steep terrain hikes.

Wild donkeys, camels, and horse buggies can hasten travel time between highlights. Most of the sites are best reached on foot. Licensed guides have exceptional knowledge and can add a deeper dimension to your visit by showing you secret tombs and hidden details. Sunrise and sunset are when Petra truly glows, so come early and stay late.

Why Do We Have Two Nostrils?

Solving quadratics by taking square roots examples | High School Math | Khan Academy

View All

Every Mathematical Theory Is Held Inside a Physical Substrate

There goes my solution for Zeno’s paradox, which is: before you can get all the way somewhere, you have to get halfway there. And before you can get halfway there, you have to get a quarter of the way there. And therefore, you’ll never get there. One way…

See Inside Russia's Famed Mariinsky Ballet Theatre | National Geographic

Russians seem to be very good at taking something and bringing it to a whole new level. Take ballet, for example; it was invented in Italy, popularized in France, but the ballet we know now would not be here if it weren’t for the Russians. The heart of b…

When Life Hurts, Stop Clinging to It | The Philosophy of Epictetus

Our very sense of wellbeing is at gunpoint when we cling to the fickle, unreliable outside world. Around two thousand years ago, Stoic philosopher Epictetus observed that people are burdened and dragged down because they tend to care about too many things…

How To Deal With Setbacks

It’s like saying that you want to be a boxer, but like after you get really good at boxing, you’ll never have to take a punch again. It’s like, no, the sport, people, that’s the sport of the game we’re playing. All right, this is Michael Seibel with Dalt…

Second derivatives (parametric functions) | Advanced derivatives | AP Calculus BC | Khan Academy

So here we have a set of parametric equations where x and y are both defined in terms of t. If you input all the possible ts that you can into these functions and then plot the corresponding x and y’s for each chord for each t, this will plot a curve in t…

Cavalieri's principle in 3D | Solid geometry | High school geometry | Khan Academy

So we have two cylinders here, and let’s say we know that they have the exact same volume, and that makes sense because it looks like they have the same area of their base, and they have the same height. Now, what I’m going to do is start cutting up this…

Stunning Stone Monuments of Petra | National Geographic

More Articles