Petra
Just got back from the Glenbow Museum where I hung out with the Kula Ring execs (anthropology club) and checked out the exhibit on Petra: The Lost City of Stone. Petra's an ancient city in Jordan where all the buildings are carved right out of the sandstone cliffs. So cool. The city was a crossroads in the spice trade between the Far East and Rome/Egypt and the people of Petra, the Nabataeans, were really resourceful people coping with life in the desert. In more recent times, they filmed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in Petra.
posted by Avatamsaka Monastery Choir at 6:14 PM
2 Comments:
I went and saw Petra this past sunday. The thing that struck me was how many of the spices that were transported across those trade routes through Petra are spices that we still value today (cloves, ginger, cinnamon, etc). In a way, we're still engaging in the same exchanges of goods that have been occuring for thousands of years. It makes me feel somewhat connected to the people of those past times.
Yeah, I still marvel at the salt trade (North to West Africa) and the fact that salt was once traded pound for pound with gold. I can believe it though. Imagine what our food would taste like without salt!
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