Petra, Jordan - the Siq

The Siq is a mile-long canyon that leads to Petra. It fills with water during flash floods in the rainy season, and so it has been slowly worn away over time into very interesting shapes. At some places it is only wide enough for a couple people to pass through. This provides a natural defense for the city (it would be difficult to march an army through).

Along the sides of the Siq you can see grooves cut into the wall, and in some places, the remainder of terracotta pipes. How old are these pipes? Petra was founded in 300 BC and largely abandoned around 400 AD. So they're surprisingly old to just be sitting around! But that's everything in Petra - it's an unprotected site. Something else you should notice in my pictures - where are all the people, crowding around to see stuff? They aren't there. In the morning when I was walking through Petra, it was me, four backpackers, and the Bedouins who live there.

The pipes hint to a key part of Petra's history. Back in the BC's, the Bedouin nomads realized that they could build cisterns to catch rainwater, and then funnel those cisterns into a common, enormous cistern through the pipes. This centralized water in the desert allowed civilization to flourish, but also became a marketable commodity. As trade caravans passed through the desert, they would stop to buy some water for the journey, and to trade their goods. And thus Petra became a center for business and trade routes.