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Thamugadi, a Roman outpost in Algeria, was saved by the Sahara
- zeristor 7y agoExporting grain by wagons to the coast can’t have been that viable could it? Am I missing something?
- dan-robertson 7y agoWhy wouldn’t that be viable? Eg lots of grain came to Rome from Sicily and it would need to make it to the coast from there somehow.
- jbattle 7y agoOstia to Rome was only 30km and they could use barges on the Tiber to send goods up/down
- Gibbon1 7y agoProbably not from Thamugadi. I think it was a frontier city with a garrison used to project Roman occupied territory to the north where the arable land was.
- onyva 7y agoWhat is a Scotsman doing in Algeria? I love it how the story of colonialism (starting 1830, which was as violent in Algeria as elsewhere) is told without any context. Just brave, "imposingly tall and broad"... sure. National Geographic will never change, I guess.
- yorwba 7y agoAs the article mentions, he was the British consul in Algiers from 1763 to 1765. At the time, Algeria was a vassal state in the Ottoman Empire and far from being colonized by Europeans. On the contrary, during the 17th century Britain had excellent relations to the Barbary pirates of the region, cooperating against Spain and France in the form of Anglo-Turkish piracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Turkish_piracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Turkish_piracy
- Torwald 7y agoBecause it's off-topic. It's a piece about Thamugadi as an arhceological site. There is no need for political commentary.
- mythrwy 7y agoHe was proving that the colonialism of Algeria started much early than 1830. (1730 years earlier at minimum). Horrible Romans were so violent. What have they ever done for us? Well, besides roads and the aqueduct, but other than that?
- onyva 7y agoI specifically indicated in my comment that colonialism in Algeria starting in 1830, and trust me, I didn’t need Wikipedia to find that out. So don’t try to distract. I’m talking about NG’s nonchalant style of writing.
- brighter2morrow 7y ago>Horrible Romans were so violent. What have they ever done for us? Well, besides roads and the aqueduct, but other than that? Exactly. The same people who claim about colonialism are the same ones who complain about intertribal warfare when we leave. We should be thanking colonialists for bringing Peace to the places they conquered, a peace which has washed away since decolonization.
- dang 7y agoPlease don't take HN threads into dismal ideological flamewar. Look at what a wreck we got below. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lawlessone 7y agoThanks for Killing millions of us, our population still hasn't recovered to it's peak 8 million Signed Ireland.
- 52-6F-62 7y agoAlso I'd like my father's family farms and moors back, please. Signed Scotland.
- brighter2morrow 7y ago
- markphip 7y agoI am curious how these discoveries are made and excavated. There are some large structures here. Were they sticking out of the sand or completely buried? Hard to imagine 20-30 feet of sand covering it all. Makes you wonder what else is buried in various deserts around the world.
- Torwald 7y ago> I am curious how these discoveries are made and excavated. In the case of a Roman fortification such as Thamugadi probably written sources such as maps, lists for military or commercial use, history and so on.
- imvetri 7y agoI'm a Tamil speaker, from southern part of India. The word Thamugadi feels like a Tamil word. Tha + mugam + adi. Tha(give me) + mugadi (mugam+adi)(faceprint/ witness/ bless).
- jaoued 7y agoThe word is actually Berber - Amazigh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timgad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timgad Interesting though to see that the same word means something to someone else in another culture. We're all connected somehow.
- chawco 7y agoThis article seems to get Numidia screwed up twice — once calling it Mumidia, and once referring to it as Nubia! It was a really important region politically, especially in the lead up to the fall of the republic. Come on, Nat Geo...
- dr_dshiv 7y agoI still hope there will be opportunities for discovering lost manuscripts in desert climates like this.