Late-Roman Ruins and Pottery Uncovered at Antioch

Late Roman-era rooms and earthen offering vessels have been discovered by archaeologists in southern Türkiye amid ongoing excavations of the ancient city of Antiocheia, the head of the dig said on Friday.

Excavations around the Church of St. Pierre, a pilgrimage site for many Christians, began on Oct. 10 in the province of Hatay, launched by a 12-person team led by the local archaeology museum.

“During the excavations, we found rooms and many offering vessels belonging to the settlement from the late Roman era,” said Ayse Ersoy, head of the Hatay Archeology Museum.

Speaking to Anadolu Agency, Ersoy said: “We think that at that time, people who visited the church on pilgrimage bought offering vessels from here, and filled it with holy water in the Church of St. Pierre”

Touching on the historical significance of the site, Ersoy said: “Antiocheia was founded by Seleukos I in 300 BC, and then this region was inhabited during the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman periods.”

The ancient city was situated on the foothills of Mount Starius, also known as Habib-i Neccar, and the Asi River, including the cave church, carved into the mountainside at the place where St. Pierre first preached, according to UNESCO.

These were the first scientific excavations in the residential areas of Antiocheia, noted Ersoy.

She also said the team was working on a project to turn the site of the Church of St. Pierre and the nearby Necmi Asfuroglu Archeology Museum into an open-air museum.

Possible Burial Place of St. Nicholas Uncovered in Turkey

Archaeologists in southern Turkey have just uncovered the original burial place of Father Christmas himself, formally known as St. Nicholas, but whose modern nicknames of Santa Claus, Saint Nick and Kris Kringle are known by children the world over.

While researchers already knew that the saint’s body was buried in the fourth century A.D. church in Turkey’s Antalya province, the holy man’s remains were stolen around 700 years after he died, so the specific spot where he was originally interred was a mystery.

Now, clues gathered during a new excavation of this church, including the ecclesiastical building’s similarity to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and the placement of a fresco depicting Jesus, hint at exactly where St. Nick’s body was likely laid to rest.

Located on Turkey’s southern coast, the modern town of Demre boasts the Church of St. Nicholas, built in A.D. 520 on top of an older church where the Christian saint served as bishop in the fourth century A.D. Then known as Myra, the small town was a popular Christian pilgrimage spot following St. Nicholas’ death and burial there in A.D. 343.

Very little is known about Nicholas’s life, but legends abound — he is said to have rescued three girls from prostitution, to have chopped down a demon-possessed tree, to have resurrected three murdered children who were pickled in brine, and to have gotten into a fist-fight during the First Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325, according to Britannica(opens in new tab). And, of course, Nicholas was said to have frequently given away his inherited wealth anonymously to the poor, eventually leading to the legend of St. Nick as Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, in A.D. 1087, “some wise and illustrious men of Bari [Italy]… discussed together how they might take away from the city of Myra… the body of the most blessed confessor of Christ, Nicholas,” according to a contemporaneous manuscript translated from Latin by late medievalist Charles W. Jones.

Their plan was to “break open the floor of the church and carry away the holy corpse.” The group succeeded, carting off most of the skeletal remains of St. Nicholas, and leaving just a few bones and a broken sarcophagus in Myra.

In spite of this desecration, the church of St. Nicholas in Demre itself has survived for more than a millennium, with archaeological excavation beginning at the end of the 20th century.

Through this work, researchers discovered the foundations of the earliest church, covered by many feet of sand and silt. Last week, Osman Eravşar, chairman of the Antalya Cultural Heritage Preservation Regional Board, announced the discovery of the location of St. Nicholas’s tomb at the base of a fresco of Jesus.

In an interview(opens in new tab) with the Turkish news organization DHA (Demirören Haber Ajansı), Eravşar noted that the current excavations have revealed “the floor on which St. Nicholas’s feet stepped” from the original church.

“This is an extremely important discovery, the first find from that period,” DHA’s English coverage quoted Eravşar as saying.

The original burial place of St. Nicholas has also been found, according to Eravşar. When the Bari contingent removed the saint’s bones in the 11th century, they also shoved some sarcophagi aside, obscuring their original location. Eravşar told DHA that “his sarcophagus must have been placed in a special place, and that is the part with three apses covered with a dome.

There we have discovered the fresco depicting the scene where Jesus is holding a Bible in his left hand and making the sign of blessing with his right hand.” A marble floor tile with the Greek words for “as grace” could mark his exact grave.

Supporting that hypothesis is the shape of the church itself. Just as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has an unfinished dome on top, so does the Church of St. Nicholas at Myra.

When it was restored by Emperor Alexander II of Russia in the 1860s, the dome was never completed. This unfinished dome may have been a purposeful attempt to link St. Nicholas with the story of Jesus’s crucifixion and ascension into the sky.

“It’s not unusual for churches to be built atop one another,” William Caraher, an archaeologist at the University of North Dakota with a speciality in early Christian architecture, who was not involved in the excavation, told Live Science in an email. “In fact, the presence of an earlier church on a site has been a reason to build a church since Early Christian and Byzantine times.” 

But Caraher thinks that the marble floor tile with Greek letters could be from some other context, reused possibly in antiquity because of the common word “charis” (grace) etched into it.

Caraher noted that St. Nicholas is significant in Orthodox and Catholic traditions, with churches and chapels dedicated to him throughout the Mediterranean. “I think many people — from eager kiddos on Christmas Eve to world-weary science reporters and grizzled archaeologists — have at some point in their lives hoped to get a little glimpse of the real St. Nick,” Caraher said.

An 8,500-year-old human skeleton and musical instrument were found in the garden of the apartment

An approximately 8,500-year-old human skeleton and a three-hole musical instrument were found during an excavation in the garden of an apartment in the Bahçelievler District of Bilecik.

This place, which is likely to be one of the first points of human settlements in Western Anatolia, was discovered for the first time when a resident of Bilecik reported some ceramic pieces found here to the Archeology Museum.

As a result of two years of work, 11 human skeletons estimated to be 8,500 years old and musical instruments with three holes from the same period were found in the garden of the apartment.

Archaeologists also found grains such as lentils, barley and vetch, as well as varieties of wheat used to make bread and pasta.

Stating that this year’s most important find is a three-hole wind instrument, Fidan added: “We also found religious objects such as ornamented boxes made of terracotta, human-shaped amulets and animal figures during the excavations. In addition, a skull we found in the courtyard gives us information about the religious life of that period.”

Fidan said, “We think that this musical instrument, which has 3 holes, is a part of a musical instrument that makes sounds and changes sound notes. He also stated that the tool can be used thanks to an appliqué mouthpiece attached to this piece.

The head of the excavation, Assoc. ErkanFidan said, “The human skeletons found in the excavation area belong to the oldest adolescent people in the Neolithic Age in Western Anatolia.”

Fidan stated that “the human communities that came here 9 thousand years ago and stayed here for about a thousand years, unearthed the first villages.” In addition, Fidan said that people living in the region who know how to do agriculture also domesticated animals.

Fidan also noted that they found other human skeletons in the excavation area and that these skeletons were examined in detail at the Hacettepe University Anthropology Department Laboratory.

He also stated that they aim to learn a lot about these people in the near future, about their age, gender, illness and the food they eat.

The finds found in the excavation will be exhibited in the Bilecik Archeology Museum after the restoration and research works are completed.

13,000-year-old buildings discovered in Mardin

The ongoing excavations in the southeastern province of Mardin have uncovered the remains of several buildings, which feature many beads with various depictions engraved on them dating back 13,000 years.

“There are structures dated much older in the world called pre-neolithic temporary shelters,” said archaeologist Ergül Kodaş, who leads the excavation works. “However, some structures unearthed in Boncuklu Tarla [Beaded Field] site in Mardin date back 13,000 years, and they are among the first examples of permanent villages.”

The site is one of the rare settlements which gives information about the entire early Neolithic period, according to Kodaş.

The archaeologist also pointed out that some structures unearthed at the site are 1,000 years older than Göbeklitepe, which is known as the oldest temple in the world.

Göbeklitepe, declared an official UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018, was discovered in 1963 by researchers from the universities of Istanbul and Chicago.

Various historical artefacts, including a 65-centimetre-long human statue dating back 12,000 years, have been discovered during the excavations.

“The remains of 12,000-year-old buildings that were built on top of each other from three different periods have been found during the excavations,” the expert noted.

She stated that the buildings were presumed to be temples, but it is not known what exactly they were used for.

“The buildings can be thought of as a communal living centre. What we know is that these are not residences, but we don’t know whether they were buildings used for gatherings on special occasions, for rest, for storage purposes, or if they were religious buildings.”

“It’s hard to call many of these buildings faith-centred, which is why we call them public buildings,” she added.

Stating that they encountered figures such as mountain goats, scorpions, bullhead, snakes and spider on the beads, Kodaş said these were used as pendants.

“They carved the bone and put bead stones on it,” she explained, adding that most of them belong to 8,000-9,000 B.C.

With the support of the Turkish Historical Society, the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage and Museums, Mardin Metropolitan Municipality, Dargeçit Municipality and the Dicle Development Agency (DİKA), excavations have been completed in a four-decare area of the site.

After the excavation works to be started in the new areas are completed, the region will be opened to tourism. Boncuklu Tarla was discovered in 2008 during a field survey. Its first excavations started in 2012.

Houses with quarry stone walls and stiffened clay floors from the Aceramic Neolithic Age, which date back to 10,000 B.C. and 7,000 B.C., were found during the excavations at the site in Dargeçit.

Along with thousands of beads used in ornaments, obsidian or flint blades, waste from ornament making and stone chipping tools were found at the site.

The tools include blades, gimlets, arrowheads and microliths.

Archaeologists find a 1,800-year-old military medal in Türkiye’s Perre

A 1,800-year-old military medal that was given to successful soldiers and troops in the Roman army has been unearthed in an ancient city in southeastern Türkiye, according to archaeologists.

During excavations this year, which has been periodically conducted since 2001, in the ancient city of Perre – one of the five largest cities of the ancient Kingdom of Commagene – in the Adıyaman province, archaeologists found the bronze military medal bearing the head of Medusa, a monster in the form of a woman with snakes for hair, the very sight of which would turn a person to stone.

Mehmet Alkan, director of the Adıyaman Museum, told reporters that excavations continue in the area with mosaics and in the section called the “infinity ladder.”

“The medal with a Medusa head appears as an award given to a soldier for his success,” he explained.

“As it is known, a bronze military diploma, which was given to a Roman soldier named Calcilius Antiquus after he served in different legions of the empire for 20 years, during the reign of Roman Emperor Hadrian, was unearthed in 2021.

This diploma was very important in terms of showing that Roman retired soldiers were placed in the city of Perre during the Roman Empire period,” Alkan said.

“The bronze phalera and the iron sword unearthed during the 2022 excavations are finds that support this thesis. Military phaleras, which have examples made of gold, silver, bronze and sometimes glass, can be explained as a kind of medal given to soldiers and troops who were successful in the Roman army,” he explained.

“They can be attached to the breastplates of the soldiers and sometimes to the banners of the troops.

The head of Medusa was carved in relief on the bronze phalera unearthed in the ancient city of Perre. The head of Medusa also functions as a kind of apotropaic symbol, that is, as a protector.”

Polish archaeologists discover ‘unusual’ 8,000-year-old building in Turkey

Polish archaeologists working in Çatalhöyük in central Anatolia (Turkey) have discovered a large mudbrick building, in which the inhabitants of one of the oldest settlements in the world met. It was built near the end of the settlement’s existence, over 8,000 years ago.

Çatalhöyük, an archaeological site in central Turkey, was inhabited without interruption for almost 1,200 years – between 7,100 and 5,950 BCE.

It is estimated that during its peak period, the densely built settlement with an area of several dozen hectares had approx. 2,000. residents. From a bird’s eye view, it looked like a honeycomb, and the entrances of houses were on their flat roofs.

This year, Polish archaeologists under the supervision of Professor Arkadiusz Marciniak from the Faculty of Archaeology of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań examined an unusual structure from the end of the settlement located on the eastern edge of the settlement, a few hundred meters from its central part.

The archaeologists noticed the entire surface of the structure was built-up. The buildings consist of 12 platforms – elevations covered with clay, nine of which are located along all the walls of the building.

Professor Marciniak said: “The building was clearly larger than the typical residential structures from that period. It was built on a square plan, and its area was about 30 sq m. Its interior was also unusual.

“There are probably human burials under most of them, but we will get the answer to this question during excavations planned for next year.”

The edge of the eastern platform is decorated with two pilasters (flat architectural elements used to give the appearance of supporting columns). On both sides of each pilaster there were pedicles (attachment point for antlers). There was a semi-column on each of the four walls, one of them decorated with a relief.

A large part of the western wall was covered with a painting, mainly in red. A large furnace was located by the southern wall.

In the central part of the building, archaeologists noticed the remains of the hearth. Two holes in the walls led into its interior.

According to Professor Marciniak, the building did not have a residential function, although earlier residents of the settlement buried the dead under their houses. A large number of mysterious platforms, their decorations and unusual layout of the structure indicate that the building was used by the entire community living in the settlement.

Marciniak said: “We know that the building was used when Çatalhöyük was no longer a mega-settlement with thousands of residents. The residents dispersed. They would return to visit the place where their ancestors had lived. Some had the honour of being buried there.”

He added that although the building could have been a religious one, “I would attribute a greater role to social integration. The hearth in the middle suggests that people gathered around it. We do not yet know how many – and what type of burials are in this building.”

A typical residential building from this period was smaller and had places for storing food and making tools. The entrance led through the hole in the roof.

This is the first such building discovered in this settlement, although during previous research archaeologists did find buildings that differed from standard houses from the older phases of the settlement, interpreted as temples, among other things.

Marciniak continued: “Until now, Çatalhöyük was the only large Neolithic settlement in the Middle East, where such a building was not known.”

In his opinion, the discovery contradicts the existing vision of the egalitarian population inhabiting the settlement at the end of its existence.

He said: “The discovery confirms significant social changes that took place at the end of the settlement’s existence. They led to the formation local communities that had unequal access to the goods and objects of prestige.”

Çatalhöyük is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world. It became famous thanks to the characteristic mudbrick buildings. Their walls adjoined each other directly, and the entrances were on the roof level. The interiors of some houses were richly decorated with paintings. In 2012, Çatalhöyük was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Unusual Burials Unearthed in Turkey’s Ancient Port of Anemurium

Skeletons of four humans, one of which is a baby, have been found in an area which is believed to be a colonnaded street, during the excavations in the ancient port city “Anemurium” in the southern province of Mersin. The team was excited by the fact that the baby skeleton was buried in an amphora.

Excavation, research and restoration works continue throughout the year in the ancient city of Anemurium, located on an area of approximately 600 decares on the Mediterranean coast in the Anamur district by a team of academics and students from many different universities under the chairmanship of Professor Mehmet Tekocak.

The archaeologists have been recently working in an area, which is not a necropolis area and is thought to be a colonnaded street. They first reached the skeleton of a baby, which was carefully placed in an amphora, and then the skeleton of three individuals who are considered to be the baby’s family.

“At the moment, we are working in the area we call the colonnaded street. But during the previous and this year’s excavations, we found many human skeletons in this area. Now we found four individuals buried directly in the ground. But what is interesting for us is that although it is not the necropolis area of the ancient city of Anemurium, many human skeletons are found here,” said Tekocak.

Tekocak stated that the buried baby was in a broken commercial amphora. “What is interesting for us is that this is the first time we have encountered this situation in the region, and it is likely that a newborn baby died before long and its body was buried in a commercial amphora.

In other words, an amphora, left as a gift in the tombs and used in trade in ancient times, was the first time used as a baby grave in the ancient city of Anemurium.

Adult individuals were very carelessly buried directly in the ground. But they created a very special area for the baby. Babies and children always received special attention in ancient times. The love for a child, which is still valid today, somehow continues in the world of the dead,” he said.

Noting that due to the fact that they found skeletons on a street area, they had different thoughts, Tekocak said, “Maybe there was a church structure here that is not known in the literature and these burials were made in its garden.

Last year, we identified eight individuals in a single underground chamber tomb in the necropolis area. We found seven individuals in the area we are currently working this year.

In other words, here we are faced with seven human skeletons, five of which are adults, one is a baby, and the other is a child. Unfortunately, we have not encountered such a situation in the vaulted tombs of the Roman period in the necropolis area of the city.

Already in ancient times, these tombs must have been robbed. We have encountered such burials almost every year since 2018 in the ancient Anemurium.”

Is This Man-Made Underground Complex ONE MILLION Years Old?

While most researchers and scholars around the globe agree that human civilization as we know it only has only existed for some 12,000 years on our planet, there are countless discoveries that point toward a much different past.

There are many findings ranging from temples, structures, and artefacts that are evidence of advanced civilizations that inhabited Earth much sooner than mainstream scholars suggest. However, many of these incredible findings have been considered as impossible due to the fact that they alter our written history in every possible way.

In recent years, many researchers have started looking at the history of the civilization on Earth with an open mind. One of those researchers is without a doubt, Dr. Alexander Koltypin, a geologist, and director of the Natural Science Research Center at Moscow’s International Independent University of Ecology and Politology.

During his long career, Dr. Koltypin has studied numerous ancient underground structures mainly in the Mediterranean and has identified numerous similarities which have led him to believe that many sites were interconnected. But most incredibly, the weathering of the structures together with their material composition and extreme geological features has led him to believe these megastructures were built by advanced civilizations that inhabited Earth millions of years ago.

Writing on his website Dr. Koltypin states:

“When we examined the constructions… none of us never for a moment had a doubt that they are much older than the ruins of the Canaanite, Philistine, Hebraic, Roman, Byzantine and other cities and settlements that are placed on it and around.” 

During his travel to the Mediterranean, Dr. Koltypin was able to accurately record the features present in different ancient sites, something that allowed him to compare, afterwards, their incredible similarities and details which tell an incredible alternative history; one that has been firmly rejected by mainstream scholars.

Dr. Koltypin argues that mainstream archeologists who work in the region are used to dating sites by looking at the settlement of rock, debris and the strata of earth located on them or in their vicinity, however, some dates were applied when, in fact, the actual sites were much older prehistoric structures.

While traveling near the Hurvat Burgin ruins in Adullam Grove Nature Reserve, central Israel, Dr. Koltypin recalled a similar feeling when he climbed on the top of the rock city Cavusin in Turkey. Almost a Deja vu feeling, Dr. Koltypin said:

“I was personally convinced once again (in the first time the same feeling came to me after I climbed to the top of the rock city Cavusin in Turkey) that all these rectangular indentations, man-made underground structures and scattered debris of megaliths were one underground-terrestrial megalithic complex which was opened by erosion to a depth of several hundred meters” 

In his work (source), Dr. Koltypin argues that not all parts of the giant complex are located underground. There are some parts that have come above ground due to geological shifts that have occurred throughout the history of our planet where Dr. Koltypin includes the incredibly rocky towns of Cappadocia in modern-day Turkey.

“On the basis of this, we can conclude that the underground cities of Cappadocia (including Tatlarin rock city) intended for the accommodation of the ordinary population and the rock city of Cavusin (or its part) was the residence of the kings of the underground. Though almost nothing is known about subterranean, nevertheless we can assume that the people who built the underground cities (if they even were men) were sun-worshipers professed the religion of sun gods (harmony and life by the Divine principles – nature laws). After many thousand or millions of years, this religion had become a basis of the Christian religion.” — Dr. Alexander Koltypin 

Dr. Koltypin continues explaining that certain sites in central and Northern Israel and central Turkey were exposed after cutting into the ground some one hundred meters.

“According to my estimates, such depth of erosion … could hardly be formed in less time than 500,000 to 1 million years,” he wrote on his website.

Dr. Koltypin suggests that certain parts of the complex surfaced as a result of mountain formation processes.

According to his estimates, there is evidence to support that the composition of building material found on a site in Antalya Turkey, referred to by Dr. Koltypin as “Jernokleev site,” are up to One Million years old even though mainstream scholars refuse to accept that age proposing instead that the site dates back to the Middle Ages.

Dr. Koltypin further adds that as a result of Earth’s crust moving throughout the centuries, parts of the underground complex were plunged into the sea.

“Practically in all the studied underground constructions of Israel and in the majority of underground constructions of Turkey, sediments of lithified (hard) and calcareous clay deposits are widely developed on their floor,” Dr. Koltypin writes on his website. 

Returning to the subject, Dr. Koltypin suggests that the similarity seen in numerous megalithic ruins is evidence of a profound connection present in ancient sites which were connected as one giant prehistoric complex.

According to Dr. Koltypin, numerous megalithic blocks weighing tens of tons could have been directly attached to underground complexes in the distant past.

“This circumstance gave me a reason to call the underground structures and geographically related ruins of cyclopean walls and buildings as a single underground-terrestrial megalithic complex,” writes Dr. Koltypin in his website.

He further adds that the megalithic construction which is seen in all corners of the world, seem to surpass, by far, the technological capabilities of ancient civilizations who, according to mainstream scholars, built them.

Making reference to the technological capabilities of the ancients, Dr. Koltypin states the stones fit together perfectly in some parts without cement and the ceilings, columns, arches, gates and other elements seem beyond the work of men with chisels. Adding to the mystery of these incredible sites, Dr. Koltypin notes that structures built on top of, or near sites by the Romans or other civilizations are completely primitive.

Mystery Tracks Left Behind Advanced Technology Millions Of Years Ago

Dr. Alexander Koltypin believes that the mysterious markings that extend along the Phrygian Valley, in central Turkey, were made by an intelligent race between 12 and 14 million years ago.

“We can assume that ancient vehicles with “wheels” were driven into the soft ground, perhaps a wet surface,” said the geologist. “Because of the great weight of these vehicles, they left behind very deep grooves which eventually petrified and turned into evidence.”

Geologists are familiar with such phenomena as they have found petrified footprints of dinosaurs that were preserved in the same way.

Together with three colleagues, Dr. Koltypin, director of the Natural Science Scientific Research Centre at Moscow’s International Independent Ecological-Political University, traveled to the site in Anatolia, Turkey where these markings can be found. Upon returning from his trip, he described the observed as ‘petrified tracking ruts in rocky tuffaceous [made from compacted volcanic ash] deposits’.