Recently, archaeologists published a discovery made in Jordan. With the help of satellite imagery and drone photography, they stumbled upon a huge ceremonial platform bang in the center of the ancient city of Petra.
The aerial images showed a building on top of a platform in Petra, which is situated in today's Jordan.
The findings were published by Sarah Parcak and Christopher Tuttle in a report, explaining that the monument has been "hidden even in plain sight". The discovery tends to be twice as impressive because the platform measures 184 by 161 feet, with the length of an Olympic swimming pool and double its width, according to National Geographic.
"Petra is an outstanding site to test new survey technologies," wrote archaeologists Sarah Parcak and Christopher Tuttle. "Even after two centuries of fieldwork in Petra and its environs, new discoveries and identifications of monumental structures continue to be made."
Impressive details of the building's architecture include a large staircase sloping down to the east and a wall of columns on another side. The most ancient pottery has been discovered here around the site, indicating that it could be over 2,150 years old.
"I'm sure that over the course of two centuries of research [in Petra], someone had to know [this site] was there, but it's never been systematically studied or written up," Tuttle told the magazine. "I've worked in Petra for 20 years, and I knew that something was there, but it's certainly legitimate to call this a discovery."
No one so far paid much attention to its intricacies, as it looked like terraces that are common today, said Tuttle.
Petra was once the capital city of the Nabataeans, an Arab tribe. It was founded in the middle of second century B.C., but abandoned by the seventh century A.D. at the end of the Byzantine period.
It became known to the western world only in the 19th century. Petra is more familiar as a backdrop for the 1989 film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
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