Camel Caravan close to Palmyra, Homs Governate, Syria. Dating back to the Neolithic, Palmyra was first attested in the early second millennium BC as a caravan stop for travellers crossing the Syrian Desert. Outside the ancient walls, to the west, the Palmyrenes constructed a series of large-scale funerary monuments which now form the so-called Valley of Tombs, a 1 km long necropolis (shown in this card). The monuments numbered more than 50 and were mostly in the shape of towers reaching up to four levels.