A team of fifty-four specialists in Turkey have been excavating in and around an ancient Roman amphitheater. They recently discovered an ornate burial area devoted to gladiator tombs. The setting of...
Excavations being carried out in the ancient city of Syedra, traced back to 2,900 years ago, continue to shed light on the vibrant history of what is now Turkey. Located in the Alanya district of...
Turkish and Mongolian scientists may have found the remains of a long-lost Khan palace in eastern Turkey that they believe was built by Genghis Khan’s grandson, Hulagu Khan. Hulagu Khan was the ruler...
Kutahya in Western Anatolia is home to one of the world’s oldest settlements, which began 8,100 years ago. At this very site, during the excavations of Tavşanlı Höyük or the Tavşanlı Mound, a 3,300-...
The remains of a Roman villa have recently been unearthed in Defne district of southern Turkey’s Hatay province. The ruins consist of broken-down walls and a well-preserved floor mosaic with...
The ancient city of Kelenderis on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey is the site of the Greek Celenderis, a port and fortress in ancient Cilicia and later Isauria. From here, a furnace for commercial...
The short story Rip Van Winkle , written in 1819 by the American writer Washington Irving, is about a man who woke up after a sleep of more than two decades. Although such a work of fiction is a...
For over 1,000 years, Constantinople held out against a never-ending stream of failed attacks. Capital of the Byzantine Empire, a.k.a. the Eastern Roman Empire , it was famed for its heavily...
In the ancient city of Assos in Turkey there existed a bizarre phenomenon – the stone sarcophagi within the Assos necropolis could decompose bodies unusually fast. Instead of taking between 50 and...
The past four years of excavations in Turkey’s ancient city of Satala have produced many exciting finds. Perhaps the most remarkable of the artifacts discovered there so far are the ornate Urartian...
At Thanksgiving and Christmas each year, millions of people around the world sit around the table to eat turkey. Located at the center of the table, turkey is so important that it has generated a...
Dusty winds blow around the desolate ruins on the arid plain of Harran, and the mirage of the heat conjures up images of what was once the site of a medieval hub of science. Har means ‘fire’ in...
Deep under the Turkish town of Derinkuyu, there’s an entire world reaching 85 meters (279 ft) into the earth. Covering a vast area and with a network of labyrinthine tunnels, Derinkuyu was lost to...
Everyone loves honey. A delicious, sweet treat, it can be used in recipes, cosmetics, or as a sugar substitute. However, not all honey is made the same. This is incredibly clear in Nepal and Turkey,...
A rare 2,300-year-old Hellenistic cremation burial has been discovered in Istanbul. Artifacts discovered in the Hellenistic-era burial tomb are revealing secrets about the city of ancient Chalcedon,...
The museum at Aksaray, the gateway of Turkey’s Cappadocia region to the West, holds a very special mummy section that displays as many as 13 local mummies to interested visitors. Astonishingly, apart...
During the Hellenistic Period from 312 BC to 63 BC, the Seleucid Empire was a major superpower and at its apex encompassed Anatolia, Persia, the Levant, (now modern Turkey, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan...
Before introducing the Big Question, let’s ponder a minute. Isn’t it amazing that for hundreds of thousands of years, all of humankind lived the same way everywhere on Earth. We were all indigenous...
Four Umayyad inscriptions inscribed on limestone and marble blocks have been discovered among the ruins of the 2,600-year-old city of Knidos in western Turkey. The four Umayyad inscriptions, from...
A Turkish archaeologist who is an expert on petroglyphs claims his team has found extremely old Gobi Desert petroglyphs made by ancient Turkish-speaking peoples, reports Hurriyet Daily . Although not...
Archaeologists have found the remains of 1500-year-old architectural structures, baths, and a mosaic during the seventh stage of excavations in the ancient city of Germanicia in Turkey’s southeastern...
Pop culture usually depicts the relationship between Greeks and the East as tumultuous. This is due mainly to the three wars Greece fought against Persia, featured in films like 300 by Zack Snyder...
Those who have studied Çatalhöyük are aware that cattle appear to have been a hugely important animal in the Neolithic Central Anatolian town of Çatalhöyük East on the Konya Plain in modern-day...
A Polish diplomat assigned to his country’s embassy in Ankara, Turkey has helped solve an archaeological and historical riddle that has puzzled scholars for more than two centuries. Accomplishing a...