November 6, 1999, Petra, Jordan, overnight at Silk Road Hotel

I have learned from my past travels: generally high and low hilly areas should not be too careful, if in the great plain suddenly there are high mountains, this should be paid great attention to, there is likely to be a beautiful scenery inside; If this sudden mountain is strange and strange, then you must stop, or you will regret it sooner or later.

Two hundred kilometers south of Amman were boring sandy and dunes, and suddenly, in the distance, there was a huge purple-brown monster, like a boiling spring, and the steaming steam still swirled on it. But this is only a metaphor, the spring has long since solidified into a mountain range, and the swirling steam is the cloud on the top of the mountain. People say this is Petra

a）。

In the 19th century, a Swiss scholar of Arab civilization read from ancient books that there was a "rose-colored castle" in the vast desert. There must be some ruins of this castle, even if it's some rose-colored rubble? After nine years of searching, he discovered this place.

There is a crack in the mountain pass, which is bottomless, and when you step in, you can see that the cliffs on both sides are about seven or eight meters apart, forming a curved and smooth road. The heavens high above and the road under our feet form two parallel narrow lines. The cliffs connecting the two narrow lines, some of them are knife-cut, some are shower-hanging, but all of them are rose-red, with some ochre lines and white waves in the middle, all the way bright, all the way joyful, all the way to stretch in. I don't know how many roads I have walked and how many turns I have turned, but I am not panicked at all, because I am followed by the blue sky and accompanied by roses, and the front must be auspicious.

The end of the road is a Romanesque palace carved on the cliff wall, the six columns of more than ten meters high on the ground floor have almost no defects, enter the foyer, there are steps to reach the main entrance, there are side doors on both sides, and the carving of the door frame lintel is also very intact. On both sides of the foyer are tall knightly reliefs, both men and horses in a concise and full-bodied freehand style. On the second floor, there are three groups of tall pavilion pillar carvings, and the middle group is circular, with a total of nine Romanesque statue reliefs. The overall style of the palace is exquisite, elegant and magnificent, concentrating the aesthetic pursuit of European nobles, and the circular pavilion pillars on the second floor and the freehand relief on the first floor have a distinct oriental style.

This palace, you don't even want to treat it as a relic, its neatness, just like a classical building that is still in use in modern times, but how can there be such luxury in modern times, dare to build a palace with a color of rose-red rough stone, and it is built by digging a mountain!

The palace is known as the "Treasury of the Pharaohs", and a little further down you will see an intact Roman Colosseum, with all the auditoriums carved out of a hill and encircled in a precise semicircle. On the opposite side of the arena are a large number of magnificent European royal tombs. In addition, the rose-like caves between the cliffs are everywhere, and each cave has a beautiful design. Standing at the bottom and looking around, you can immediately conclude that this is a fantastic and beautiful castle, but this castle is surrounded by lofty mountains, and only one or two mountain crevices are secretly connected. It's dry, airy, and has springs, and I think any tribe in ancient times would have regarded it as the safest and most comfortable city to step into.

Petra is beautiful and magical, but it lacks words, and perhaps the words that should have been hidden in some undiscovered grotto, so we can only guess and imagine its history. It is generally believed to be around the second century BC from the Nabataea people

They were a group of nomadic Arabs who came from the north and were once prominent, so this hidden place was also bustling with activity, with merchants rushing in and out of the winding corridors as a post station. It also entered the sphere of influence of the Romans, so it has a deep Roman imprint.

However, around the seventh century AD, it suddenly became deserted and even gradually silent. The reason for this is that the merchants have opened up the sea route in the past, and this place is no longer a traffic station; The second is that there were two earthquakes, and the rolling rocks made people dare not live anymore. In short, it has completely escaped the sight of civilization, and for almost a thousand years, no one remembers the exquisite rose-red palace and the Colosseum, but they are still intact, only for the company of the breeze and the moon.

There are only a few nomadic Bedouins (Bedoui

I don't know how they feel when they face these magnificent ruins. Their descendants may have thought that there were such beautiful halls and jade steps between heaven and earth for them to stay. Then, if they accidentally nomad to Paris, they will also sigh "but Erer".

Standing in the valley of Petra, I have been thinking about this question: most of the visible civilizations we visited along the way are famous in the annals of history, but Petra provides another form of civilization that makes historians stammer, which should be more in the history of human development than the visible civilization, right? Knowing that a kingdom existed, but not knowing when and why it existed, let alone the name and history of the ruler; It is estimated that there has been a war, but they do not even know where the two sides belong and win or lose; Witnessing beautiful buildings, but not being able to judge their owners and uses......

Because the visible civilization has sorted out its own historical logic, it is easy for future generations to understand the breadth and depth of their existence in an exaggerated way. But this exaggeration conceals how much real abundance, chaos, contention, and annihilation! It is no wonder that most of people's understanding of the history of civilization stays in written records and the norms formulated by the recorders, because people always have a desire to simplify and clarify when they recognize various complex phenomena, especially in classrooms and textbooks. The evil consequence of this kind of psychological habit is that several established concepts are used to draw a frame and line the phenomena of ancient and modern civilizations, and to cut them to fit their feet, which harms the pluralism and naturalness of the civilization ecology.

It is a common phenomenon for us to move towards complete disorder because of the pursuit of excessive order, and to seriously damage civilization because of the attempt to regulate civilization. More commonly, many humanities have been contributing to this phenomenon.

Petra, with its stunningly beautiful, denies this. It says that human beings have a longer history, more ways to live, more sinister encounters, and more lonely glories than common sense.