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Archaeologists have discovered a 1,500-year-old shipwreck near the ancient Greek city of Kydonies, now known as Ayvalık, on Turkey’s Aegean coast. This remarkable find, part of the “Turkish Sunken-Ships Project: Blue Heritage,” sheds new light on ancient maritime trade and the region’s historical significance. Researchers from Dokuz Eylül University’s Underwater Research Center (SUDEMER) identified the shipwreck located 2.5 miles offshore at a depth of 43 meters. Led by Associate Professors Harun Özdaş and Nilhan Kızıldağ, the team worked with the approval of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Underwater robotic systems were crucial in locating and studying the site. Largest...

On the morning of 21 July, AD 365, the Eastern Mediterranean was shaken by an earthquake that is generally believed to be the strongest recorded earthquake in the Mediterranean. It probably originated around Crete, Greece, and was followed by a tsunami that hit the Mediterranean coastlines causing many deaths. In Alexandria, tsunami devastation was so severe that the day of the event was commemorated as the "day of horror" for centuries after the event.The earthquake was strong enough to lift parts of Crete by several meters. This upheaval of the island left behind fossil shorelines, which Richard Ott, a scientist...

Traces of tsunami in ancient city of Patara Tuesday, December 27, 2005 ANKARA - Turkish Daily News Archaeologists claim that an ancient lighthouse located in the ancient city of Patara on Antalya's Mediterranean coast might have been destroyed by a tsunami that hit the region in ancient times. The ruins of the lighthouse were discovered two years ago during excavations that are still under way in Patara. Professor Havva Ýþkan Iþýk, head of Akdeniz University's archaeology department, which is conducting studies in the ancient city, said they believed the lighthouse was destroyed by a tsunami since a human skeleton was...

Olympia, the Sanctuary of Zeus and venue of the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, was probably destroyed by tsunamis that reached far inland, and not as previously believed, by earthquakes and river flooding... Paläotsunamis that have taken place over the last 11,000 years along the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. The Olympic-tsunami hypothesis has been put forward due to sediments found in the vicinity of Olympia, which were buried under an 8 metres thick layer of sand and other debris, and only rediscovered around 250 years ago. "The composition and thickness of the sediments we have found, do not fit...

Erdogan said in July that Turkey would extend an invitation to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad "any time" for possible talks to restore relations between the two neighbors. Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Islamic countries should form an alliance against what he called "the growing threat of expansionism" from Israel. He made the comment after describing what Palestinian and Turkish officials said was the killing by Israeli troops of a Turkish-American woman taking part in a protest on Friday against settlement expansion in the West Bank. "The only step that will stop Israeli arrogance, Israeli banditry, and Israeli state...

According to a statement released by PLOS, a purple dye workshop dated to the sixteenth-century B.C. has been discovered on the Greek island of Aegina by Lydia Berger of Paris Lodron University and her colleagues. The researchers identified the workshop through the purple pigment preserved on ceramics that may have served as dye containers; grinding stones; a waste pit; and the crushed shells of marine snails. Most of these shells came from the banded dye-murex species of Mediterranean snail. The bones of young mammals, including piglets and lambs, were also recovered at the site. The animals are thought to have...

Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar warned on Friday that “one tiny mistake” could turn Cyprus into “a new Gaza”. Tatar, not recognized as a head of state by the international community, also suggested that Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan may soon recognize the north. Turkey is the only country that recognizes the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. in an interview with the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph, said, “A mistake or a misunderstanding such as the shooting of a Turkish soldier on the Green Line… would provoke a bomb between the two populations.” “If you shoot one Turkish soldier, you...

Marine archaeologists have identified 10 shipwrecks, including one from the Roman era, in the waters around a Greek island in the Mediterranean. The finds came to light during a multiyear project carried out by a team in collaboration with Greece's National Hellenic Research Foundation and the country's Ministry of Culture. The project has been surveying an area around the island of Kasos, which lies in the Aegean Sea, a portion of the Mediterranean between the Greek peninsula to the west and Turkey's Anatolia peninsula to the east. "This research was conducted to shed light on the maritime history of the...

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A team of researchers at the University of Patras's, OCEANUS- Lab has found evidence suggesting that early human ancestors (extinct hominids) may have sailed across the Aegean Sea.In their paper... the group describes analyzing sea level drops in the Aegean Sea during the time of early human ancestors and the possibility of such ancestors walking over land bridges to get to what are now islands in the area...In this new effort, the researchers challenged this theory by conducting a study of global glaciations and sea level drops in the Aegean Sea. Their work involved studying sea level markers in river...

In the Anavlochos mountain range in eastern Crete, archaeologists have found hundreds of ancient terracotta fragments, mostly from female figurines, that were left as votive offerings in natural rock cavities in the seventh century B.C. Within one of these cavities was a more peculiar collection of well-worn objects, including a terracotta plaque of a woman and a steatite bead that likely both date to the eighth century B.C., as well as a seventh-century B.C. terracotta horse figurine. The cavity also contained a three-sided Minoan sealstone dating to between 1850 and 1700 B.C.—at least 1,000 years earlier than the other items....

Researchers from several institutions, led by Ernst Pernicka, scientific director of the Curt-Engelhorn Center for Archaeometry (CEZA) at the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums in Mannheim and director of the University of Tübingen’s Troy project, applied a portable laser ablation system (pLA) to analyse samples of Bronze Age jewellery found in Troy and Poliochni...Poliochne, often cited under its modern name Poliochni, was an ancient settlement on the east coast of the island of Lemnos. It was settled in the Late Chalcolithic and earliest Aegean Bronze Age, and is believed to be one of the most ancient towns in Europe, preceding the construction of...

...Last spring, Manning realized he could solve the problem by looking elsewhere -- hundreds of kilometers away from Thera -- to regions of the Aegean Sea that experienced the tsunami effects caused by the eruption. Manning incorporated dates obtained for these episodes into his model to test for, and discount, the volcanic carbon dioxide caveat. On Thera itself, he also spotted the importance of a short but clearly observed gap in time between the abandonment of the town at Akrotiri and the huge eruption, and he incorporated this previously overlooked constraint into the modeling....

Phalasarna was first mentioned in ancient texts by... Scylax, Strabo, Polybius, Livy and Pliny... The treaty with Polyrrhenia gives evidence that in the third century BC, the inhabitants were engaged in piracy, a common practice of the Cretan city-states.In 69-67 BC, the Roman Republic stormed the city, blocked the harbour with massive masonry and destroyed the whole city. The location of the city was then forgotten, and Phalasarna appears in Venetian records only as a lost city. The site was rediscovered in the 19th century by British explorers Robert Pashley and Captain T. A. B. Spratt.The Temple of Demeter was...

The 4,281-foot-long (1,305 meters) tunnel, which brought water to thousands of people in its heyday, was discovered by an Egyptian-Dominican Republic archaeological team, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said in a statement(opens in new tab). Ancient Egyptian builders constructed the 6.6-foot-high (2 m) tunnel at a depth of about 65 feet (20 m) beneath the ground, Kathleen Martínez, a Dominican archaeologist and director of the team that discovered the tunnel, told Live Science in an email. Finds within the tunnel included two alabaster heads: one of which likely depicts a king, and the other represents another high-ranking person,...

What was an Orthodox Jewish man doing working for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, arguably the world’s most vocal antisemite?17 when Orthodox Jewish lobbyist Nicholas Muzin was paid millions of dollars to lobby for the Emir of Qatar to introduce him to the leaders of right-wing pro-Israel organizations, in an effort to curry favor with a Qatar-weary Donald Trump. Some of the most important right-wing activists for Israel were later ensnared in the controversy, exposed by national media outlets and in a huge investigative story by The Wall Street Journal. All said that they were traveling to Doha for Israel, even as,...

A study of DNA from ancient farmers in Europe shows sharp differences from that of modern Europeans — results that are likely to add fuel to the debate over European origins. Researchers led by Wolfgang Haak of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, argue that their finding supports the belief that modern residents of central Europe descended from Stone Age hunter-gatherers who were present 40,000 years ago, and not the early farmers who arrived thousands of years later. But other anthropologists questioned that conclusion, arguing that the available information isn't sufficient to support it. Haak's team used DNA from 24...

Moscow has largely stopped exporting gas to Europe, saying supplies will not resume until sanctions are lifted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday criticised the West's "provocations" against Russia, saying the attitude taken by western states was a mistake that triggered the energy crisis in Europe. Erdogan, who is on a state visit to Belgrade, said in a televised address that the West cannot get results through provocative policies. "Russia should not be underestimated," Erdogan said. "Russia is not a country to be taken lightly. The West is making a mistake." Erdogan also said that Europe should have thought...

Greece’s government has written to the country’s NATO and European Union partners and the head of the United Nations, asking them to formally condemn increasingly aggressive talk by officials in neighboring Turkey and suggesting that current bilateral tensions could escalate into a second open conflict on European soil. In the letters, copies of which were seen Wednesday by The Associated Press, Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias said the behavior of his country’s historic regional rival — and NATO ally — should be censured by the three bodies. “By not doing so in time or by underestimating the seriousness of the...

The radar of a Greek S-300 missile system based on the island of Crete locked on to the Turkish jets on Tuesday, Anadolu reported on Sunday, citing defence ministry sources. The F-16s were at an altitude of 3,000 metres (10,000 feet) to the west of Greece’s Rhodes island when the Russian-made S-300’s target-tracking radar locked on, the report added. The Turkish planes completed their mission and returned to their bases “despite the hostile environment”. Radar lock-ons are considered an act of hostility under NATO rules of engagement. Greek defence ministry sources dismissed the allegations. Last week, Turkey summoned the Greek...