Researchers urge caution after Jordan tomb excavation and say new clues about Nabataean culture may lie elsewhere

For one of the most famous ancient sites on the planet, there is a surprising amount about the city of Petra – and the Nabataean people who built it – that we don’t know for sure.

What exactly were their origins? How did their society operate? And why did they hand-carve such spectacular monuments into the reddish rock of the Jordanian desert?