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Thamugadi, a Roman outpost in Algeria, was saved by the Sahara (nationalgeographic.com)
57 points by ryan_j_naughton on July 31, 2019 | hide | past | favorite | 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.


[flagged]


As 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


Because it's off-topic. It's a piece about Thamugadi as an arhceological site. There is no need for political commentary.


He 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?


I 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.


>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.


Thanks for Killing millions of us, our population still hasn't recovered to it's peak 8 million

Signed Ireland.


Also I'd like my father's family farms and moors back, please.

Signed Scotland.


There's 40 million Irish descendants in the US. The Irish weren't wiped out, they just left. Also it's hard to take that concern seriously when today's Irish government has done more to increase foreigner control over Ireland than the British government ever did.


> The Irish weren't wiped out, they just left

They “just left” because the British starved them.


Can't blame the British for Agricural drought. Imagine how many more would have starved without Britain running poor houses there.


Please don't take HN threads into dismal ideological flamewar. Look at what a wreck we got below.

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