Recently, a 3,000-year-old castle has been discovered by a team of divers and researchers in Lake Van, Turkey. It's thought the mysterious ruins were built by the Urartu civilization, an Iron Age kingdom living in the region between the 6th and 9th century BC. Local legends had long told of a lost city submerged by the water levels, which have changed drastically over the past few thousand years. In 2016, a team led by Tahsin Ceylan, an underwater photographer - which does not include an archaeologist - found a structure outside the harbor of Adilcevaz, a town in Turkey that has been inhabited for thousands of years. We "came across some sort of wall outside the harbor in one of our dives. Later, on November 2017, [we] found out that it is a castle's wall that starts within the harbor and continues outside," Ceylan told Live Science.
"The castle is approximately 1 kilometer [less than a mile] long and has a solid structure."
The castle is made primarily of cut stones, Ceylan said, adding that the team had found a lion drawing on one of them, supporting the idea that Urartians — a people who flourished in Turkey about 3,000 years ago — may have built the structure. Lions were a popular motif among the people of Urartu.
Speaking to Hurriyet Daily News, the project's leader Tahsin Ceylan said: "Many civilisations and people had settled around Lake Van.
"They named the lake the "upper sea" and believed it hid many mysterious things.
"With this belief in mind, we are working to reveal the lake's secrets.
"It is a miracle to find this castle underwater."
He added: “There was a rumour that there might be something under the water but most archaeologists and museum officials told us that we won’t find anything.”
Sources:
https://www.livescience.com/61038-real-story-of-ancient-underwater-castle.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/castle-discovered-lake-turkey-underwater-lake-van-urartu-thousands-years-old-a8070911.html
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