Posted on 03/03/2026 7:47:35 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Deep in the Taurus Mountains, an unexcavated ancient city still waits. Selge: hidden, silent, and far older than Rome itself. This is its story.
Selge: The Unexcavated Ancient City Hidden Above the Canyon | 21:44
Rumiseus -- Lost Civilizations | 426 subscribers | 392 views | March 1, 2026
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
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00:00 What Is the Ancient City Hidden Deep in the Taurus Mountains?
01:26 Which Ancient Battle Was Fought on This Hidden River?
02:42 How Did a 2,000-Year-Old Bridge Survive Into the Modern World?
04:26 What Ancient Forest Still Remains From This Lost Civilization?
06:34 What Once Stood Where This Village Now Sits?
08:56 How Did This Ancient Civilization Build Its Wealth in the Mountains?
11:53 How Did This Ancient City Survive Alexander the Great?
13:49 What Remains of the Theater That Once Held 8,000 People?
20:08 What Has Survived After Centuries of Silence?
YouTube transcript reformatted at textformatter.ai *may* follow.
Description of vid: Most people visiting southern Turkey have never heard of Selge. Yet this ancient site, perched 1,250 meters above sea level inside Köprülü Canyon National Park, was once home to more than 20,000 people. Its Roman-era theater seated 8,000. Its stadium, two agoras, a colonnaded street, and temples dedicated to Zeus and Artemis are still largely where they fell and almost none of it has ever been properly excavated. What lies beneath the soil, nobody yet knows.
Before you even reach Selge, the road tells its own story. The Köprüçay River you cross to enter the canyon was known in antiquity as the Eurymedon the site of one of the ancient world's most significant battles. In the mid-5th century BC, the Athenian general Cimon defeated the Persian fleet here in what sources describe as the first naval engagement coordinated simultaneously with a land battle. Thousands of rafters glide down this river every season. Very few know what happened in these waters.
Further up, you pass Oluk Bridge a Roman Imperial structure dating to the 2nd century BC, the only river crossing in this valley until the 1990s. Before that, the Selgians used it to carry timber, storax resin, iris oil, and olive products to the coastal cities of Pamphylia, feeding a trade network that reached ancient Egypt. Storax harvested from the Liquidambar orientalis tree native to these forests was among the most prized aromatic exports in the ancient Mediterranean, mentioned by Pliny the Elder. Selge had found a commercial niche and exploited it with remarkable sophistication.
Selge was not simply a Roman city. Long before Rome, this ancient civilization carved its identity into coins wrestlers alongside Luwian inscriptions, one of Anatolia's oldest languages, dating to at least the 5th century BC. Its founding myths name the Trojan War seer Calchas as founder, or alternatively Spartan settlers from the Peloponnese. Either way, this was a city connected from its very beginning to the wider Mediterranean world.
When Alexander the Great swept through Anatolia, nearby cities like Termessos and Sagalassos refused to submit. Selge sent envoys offering to guide his forces through the mountains in exchange for being left untouched. Not cowardice pragmatism. That same instinct shaped centuries of rivalry with the neighboring city of Pednelissos, a reminder that ancient Pisidia was never unified, but a landscape of fiercely competing mountain cities.
The remains visible today date mostly to the Roman Imperial period. The theater is the most striking: well-preserved, and notably never converted for gladiatorial use its lower rows reach the orchestra without a protective barrier, suggesting it remained a civic space throughout its history. The upper agora, council chamber, acropolis temples, colonnaded street all collapsed but largely intact, waiting.
The village of Zerk sits directly on top of the old city today. The name is a corruption of Selge itself, carried forward across centuries. Researchers tracing the ancient roads found that elderly villagers far from here could still describe the paths to Zerk from memory. The belief that this place mattered never disappeared. It survived in language and in stories. Some things outlast their ruins.
So much struggle, war, conquest and killing!
Too bad they weren’t more like the peaceful native peoples of North America, who lived happily with each other since the dawn of time. They hunted together, and shared the bounty of the land equally. Their women joyfully raised the children together, in sisterly cooperation.
That is, until the white man came, and taught them to make war on each other. This made it easier for the white man to steal their land, their food, and their civilization.
Storax is an oily resin (balsam) from Liquidambar orientalis or Liquidambar styraciflua tree trunks. The wood secretes storax when the bark is damaged.
1 ounce [21.38g] = $21.60
Yeah, good times, good times.
You left off the /s
Interesting place. Lots of Greek ruins in Turkey - but I liked the Roman bridges most. Incredible they are still used
So the place that gave us Percy Selge is now home to a bunch of Zerks?
;]
😊🎵🎶🎙️🎼
Greek, Roman, Carian, Lycian, etc, would love to go, looks like a lot of rugged terrain and climbing though, so, probably not gonna. 😒
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