Back to the time travel -- after that encounter we continued south through very hot, hilly country. At one point we are coming up a hill into a town and below us on a rise is the local market; it is completely empty. The skeleton of the market is there, the outlines of stalls made out of sticks, arranged in rough rows. A few scraps of cloth hanging here and there, otherwise nothing. In the background, scrub desert. Nearer to us, nomads with daggers in their belts with camels. Nowhere is there a clue as to what millennium it is; it could be Judea, 1000 BC. Five hours later and 6,000 feet higher we are rolling past stone villages in the green highlands. The houses are mostly rectangular, well made of stone with tall peaked thatch roofs in compounds with stout stone gates. Chickens and goats running around, oxen pulling wooden plows with small iron tips, people dressed in gray cloaks: Northern Europe, 200 AD, no change.