 Welcome back to my YouTube channel. This is Daniel Rostel here bringing you today's video from the sweltering Negev Desert in Israel at the Avdat National Park, a Nebetean site of historical intrigue. So for those who visited Mitspe Ramon in the south of Israel, which is a really interesting place, if you're coming from the north of Israel, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, somewhere north of these parts, you'll probably drive southbound on road 40, which is one of the longest roads in Israel stretching from Kvarsaba all the way to the south. And Mitspe Ramon itself was actually built as a town in order to contain or hold or give accommodations to the people working on road 40 because then as of now it was a very remote part of Israel. And as you drive southbound on road 40, if you look to your left, as you come into Mitspe Ramon, you can't help but notice this crazy looking historical force in the background. And what this is, is indeed a historical force built by the Nebeteans and it's called Avdat. Now a little bit about this place and who were the Nebeteans? They were a desert people and tribe and this was actually their second most important city. Their most important city was much better known. It's called Petra today in Jordan, but built by the same people. And there was a reason why this was built here. This was built here and they dominated all over this very, very arid part of Israel. And in fact, if you look around here at this very dry countryside, there's a huge drop down to Mitspe Ramon on my right. The fortress is here. Anywhere that you'll see, a green oasis was actually a sign of where the incense route was. The incense route was the way that people traded spices back in the day. It wasn't like today where you can walk into your local chufrasal if you're in Israel or Walmort if you're watching this in the US or Tesco in London. The local cuisine of the ancient Israelite people who lived in the biblical period was very, very plain. They had a lot of fava beans, chickpeas, lentils, stuff like that bread, barley bread and spices were actually considered quite rare, prized and expensive commodities and thus used in moderation. Those spices had to come from somewhere. So when they were, whether we're talking about frankincense or myrrh stuff or religious uses, incense ingredients or cooking spices like cardamom or turmeric, that had to come overland through the incense route frequently and it was overland on camel. So think long arduous journeys. I mean, I just walked two kilometers of the landscape here and you get tired and you get very hot very quickly. So difficult terrain to go through. Now the Nebutians were clever. They figured out a system to hoard the limited amount of water that this region gets even in the wet months in Israel, which is roughly from the Jewish festival of Sukkot through to Pesach, which is coming up soon. In this part of the country, it's not that wet. So the rainfall here is indeed very, very limited. So what people did was the Nebutians did was devise systems for trapping water in order to use it for drinking water, water for their livestock and also water actually for making wine as well. They made wine and interesting to see the continuity throughout history. We visited yesterday. The Nana winery just located a few tens of kilometers, 15 kilometers in fact, in that direction towards Mitspe where the modern tradition of making wine in these apparently inhospitable desert conditions is being revitalized. Also in Ramatanega, these are two wineries I highly recommend visiting in the area. Well, you can see here Nebutian remains and also remains from different historical periods. So there's these interesting little markings on the ground here. They show you some Nebutian temples used for their worship. And as the influence of the Roman Empire spread, you also have some remains here from the early and late Roman periods, Christianity to cold as well at some point. So you've got some Byzantine churches as well. So that's what there is to see here because it is a national park. There is an entrance fee, but it's worth that. And you get to watch a really interesting 10 minute video giving you the high level oversight of what there is here. You can also see in the landscape surrounding hard to miss the unmistakable bright light of the Ashalim power station, which was once the tallest SCP solar power concentrator in the world. It's a solar power concentrator, which means there's little reflecting mirrors beaming up to it. And you can actually see it with the naked eye for I'm going to say 100 kilometers all around this part of southern Israel and it's supplying a portion of Israel's renewable energy needs. It's also interesting to think that this was literally a functioning city for a number of years and was kind of like the main city in this part of the desert. And these people, the Nebutians are kind of the sort of overlords of the desert because you can't really tell what individual buildings were being used from. But even in today's Israel, the definition of what's considered a city is a little bit looser than in some parts of the world. This would have been a local, the local center. And I can only imagine there must have been somewhere to drink their locally produced wine as well. It would have been interesting to be a fly on the wall back in those days. If you're staying in Mitspir Ramon, I can add this to my growing list of things I recommend doing. One of them is Kvish Eser of the Israel Border Road. The wineries are worth checking out. And if you're interested in history and the various peoples who populated this part of the world over the course of history, I would also add to that list the Avdat National Park to learn who the Nebutians were, their role, their connection between this ancient Negev city and Petra, and how they moved goods, spices and precious commodities throughout the desert. Thanks for watching this video from Avdat in the Negev desert located just outside of Mitspir Ramon. If you want to get more videos from me about interesting sites, people and places in Jerusalem, Israel and occasionally further afield, do consider signing up and subscribing to this YouTube channel. Thank you for watching this video.