Pre-historic settlements indicating that a thriving agricultural sedentary civilization existed in the Negev as far back as 4,000 years ago have been discovered by Dr. Nelson Glueck, noted archaeologist and president of the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, who is now conducting excavations in Israel.
Dr. Glueck discovered these settlements in the Negev, near the ancient Nabatean Hill city of Abda. Previously this area–20 miles east of the El Auja-Nitsana demilitarized zone, had been considered mainly a center of Nabatean settlements. The Nabateans rose to power and high civilization between the second century B. C. and the second century A. D. They were conquered by the Romans under Trajan in A. B. 106 and lost their identity by the end of the second century.
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