Thamugadi, a Roman outpost in Algeria, was saved by the Sahara

nationalgeographic.com

57 points·ryan_j_naughton··21 comments

This 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...

I 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.

> 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.

I'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).

The word is actually Berber - Amazigh. 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.

Exporting grain by wagons to the coast can’t have been that viable could it? Am I missing something?

Why 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.

Ostia to Rome was only 30km and they could use barges on the Tiber to send goods up/down

Probably 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.

I still hope there will be opportunities for discovering lost manuscripts in desert climates like this.

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