The Great Dam of Marib
How did Sabaean and Himyarite engineers, working with packed earth, dressed stone, and Iron Age tools, build — and then rebuild, again and again, for over a thousand years — a dam and sluice system precise enough to turn a stretch of Arabian desert into one of antiquity's richest oases, before it finally, catastrophically failed for good?
c. 8th century BCE, rebuilt and enlarged through the 570s CE · Marib, Marib Governorate, YemenAdded July 2026