A Congress, Buried in Turkey's Sand

[Madame Butterfly 0]

A Congress, Buried in Turkey's Sand

 

 

By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

Published: September 19, 2005

PATARA, Turkey - Alexander the Great was here, and so was Saint Paul, on his way to Ephesus.

 

Centuries later, the drafters of the American Constitution took the ancient Lycian League, which was based here, as an early example - in fact, it was history's earliest example - of the form of republican government they envisaged as well.

 

 

The Lycian League was mentioned twice in the Federalist Papers, once by Alexander Hamilton, once by James Madison, so it could safely be said that it entered into the history of the formation of the United States.

 

Now, after literally centuries of neglect, teams of Turkish and German archaeologists have been working under the hot sun of this small Mediterranean seacoast town, uncovering some of its treasures.

 

Among them, liberated from the many hundreds of truckloads of sand that covered it, is the actual parliament building where the elected representatives of the Lycian League met. It has rows of stone seats arranged in a semicircle, like the chambers of the American Congress. Its stone-vaulted main entrances are intact, and so is the thronelike perch where the elected Lyciarch, the effective president of the League, sat.

 

The discovery has excited the archaeologists, and some others as well.

 

"It blew my mind to find out that the parliament building of the first federation in history, which served as an inspiration for the framers our own Constitution, was being excavated 15 minutes from my house on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey," said Stephen J. Solarz, the former congressman from Brooklyn.

 

Like a few hundred other foreigners who are attracted to this relatively undiscovered spot of turquoise waters, rocky coves and cerulean skies, Mr. Solarz and his wife, Nina, built a house in town nearby and spend a couple of months of the year there. They have become informal patrons of the archaeological project, and hope to persuade the United States Congress to sponsor a celebration here in 2007, the 220th anniversary of the framing of the American Constitution.

 

But other things make Patara important besides the inadvertent role it played in the creation of the United States. It is often said of Turkey that it has more Greek ruins than Greece. But Patara is a Greek ruin, a Roman one and a Byzantine one as well, which is what makes the site, buried in sand for centuries, an important newcomer to the Turkish archaeological scene, likely to take its place alongside Troy, Pergamon or Ephesus as one of the most important ones.

 

"It's very exciting," said Fahri Isik, a professor of archaeology from Akdeniz University in Antalya who is in charge of the dig. In fact, Mr. Isik is hopeful that further excavations will not only increase knowledge of the Lycian League but also help illuminate what are often referred to as the "dark ages," of early Mediterranean history, the 12th to the 8th centuries B.C., about which very little is known.

 

"It's nice to have beautiful buildings," he said, drinking mint tea a few hundred yards from the ancient Patara parliament, "but we hope that we'll be able to learn some new things as well."

 

Mentioned in the "Iliad," Patara was a port city that was used by the Persians in the fifth century B.C. during the Persian Wars, written about by Thucydides. One of the archaeological expedition's major findings so far is the impressive ruins of an ancient lighthouse, which guided ships crossing the wine-dark sea to its harbor two millennia ago.

 

The Lycian League itself had some 23 known city-states as members, which sent one, two or three representatives, depending on the city's size, to the newly uncovered parliament, or Bouleuterion, as it was called. Inscriptions uncovered at the site provide the names of the various Lyciarchs who sat in special seats about midway up the semicircular chamber.

 

Later, it was a province in the Roman Empire. An inscription uncovered by archaeologists at the ruins of an immense granary, which has also been dug out of the sand in recent times, indicates that the Emperor Hadrian and his wife, Sabine, visited Patara in the spring of 131 A.D. It ceased being a federation in the fourth century A.D., when it was taken over by the Byzantines.

 

"The whole of international life was here, both in the Roman times and in the time of the Lycian Federation," said Joachim Ganzert, a professor of Architecture History from Hanover University who, with a team of German students, worked all summer in Patara.

 

"It will have a similar importance to Ephesus and Pergamon, but the work here has only been going on for 15 years," he said. "In Pergamon, they recently celebrated the 110th anniversary of the start of the excavation."

 

Though Patara has been visited by archaeologists for 200 or more years, a serious, painstaking excavation of the site started only recently, partly because it is an especially difficult place, afflicted with shifting sands, vegetation that runs riot in the fall rainy season and water that seeps in from the nearby Mediterranean. Money is also needed, most urgently to preserve the many stone inscriptions that, no longer buried by sand, face the danger of erosion.

 

But now trucks go to and from Patara, carrying sand away - 5,000 truckloads from the lighthouse alone - and cranes lift immense carved stone blocks out of the ruins so they can be labeled, studied and eventually put back into place in reconstructions of the ancient buildings.

 

"You couldn't see anything here in the 1980's, only the tops of a few stones," Gül Isin, an archaeologist from Akdeniz University who serves as a sort of aide-de-camp to Mr. Isik. The town itself, with just a few modest guesthouses, is largely isolated from the package-tour hustle-bustle of the nearby Turkish coast, even though it is home to a pristine white-sand beach, itself a protected nesting ground for sea turtles.

 

"But we've made a lot of progress," Ms. Isin said. An impressive necropolis, a Roman bath, a large semicircular theater, a broad main avenue leading to the agora, or market square, a Byzantine basilica (one of 22 churches that were once in Patara) and a fortified wall have been largely rescued from the sand and scrub brush so far.

 

Of course, there is also the parliament building, linking this dusty place to the United States, 7,000 miles and 1,800 years into the future.

[Wishfire 2]

I thought it was rather interresting. It makes me want to travel to these ancient sites so I can see with my own eyes what civilizations millenia ago created.

[Madame Butterfly 0]

I thought it was rather interresting. It makes me want to travel to these ancient sites so I can see with my own eyes what civilizations millenia ago created.

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That's how I feel when I read them Wishfire.

 

I wish I were out there making these discoveries. :P :lol:

[BakulaBabe 2]

Centuries later, the drafters of the American Constitution took the ancient Lycian League, which was based here, as an early example - in fact, it was history's earliest example - of the form of republican government they envisaged as well.

 

 

The Lycian League was mentioned twice in the Federalist Papers, once by Alexander Hamilton, once by James Madison, so it could safely be said that it entered into the history of the formation of the United States.

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Wow, I had no idea! That's really interesting. :lol: Thanks, Madame Butterfly. :P

[trekz 7]

Very interestomg, MB. I would love to travel to such areas and see such sites in person. I have traveled overseas only a bit, but have tried to see sites such as Newgrange in Ireland, Stonehenge and Avebury in England and Roman ruins in Trier, Germany in addition to more recent historical sites. I would love to see more.

 

I must add that I find your articles fascinating, even when I don't add posts to them. You often post things I either don't see in the newspaper or that I read in the newspaper much later after you post them here. I assume that you are on interest lists that feed you certain articles.

 

I'm curious: what sites have you personally visited?

[Madame Butterfly 0]

Very interestomg, MB.  I would love to travel to such areas and see such sites in person.  I have traveled overseas only a bit, but have tried to see sites such as Newgrange in Ireland, Stonehenge and Avebury in England and Roman ruins in Trier, Germany in addition to more recent historical sites.  I would love to see more.

 

I must add that I find your articles fascinating, even when I don't add posts to them.  You often post things I either don't see in the newspaper or that I read in the newspaper much later after you post them here.  I assume that you are on interest lists that feed you certain articles.

 

I'm curious:  what sites have you personally visited?

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No lists, I do belong to some archaeological sites, and read many science web sites.

 

Most of the sites I have visited are on the North American continent.

 

I was interested in your comment on Avebury, I think I posted a theory on this site where the author believes that Avebury may show polar cap shifting in the past.

 

What was your impression when you were there?

[trekz 7]

I found Avebury very interesting because of the town built around it. My impression was of a very imposing site, especially with the henge, or mounds of earth, that remains. The stones were very impressive to me. In reading about the site, I found it interesting that parts of the town were torn down to try to reconstruct more of the site. If I remember correctly there was a great deal of moving or resetting stones if memory servess me well. I did not get the same feel there that I got at NewGrange or Stonehenge as far as being a spiritual place, but that could just be me. This was part of a whirlwind tour day that included Stonehenge, and Salisbury Cathedrral and a Cotswald village plus The estate of the Marquis of Bath.

 

Sorry I missed your earlier article you posted. What have you read or learned about this site?

[Madame Butterfly 0]

Here's the link, I'd be very interested by what you have to say.

 

http://www.grahamhancock.com/forum/WellsSF1.php

 

 

 

Mind you, the other articles on the site, well all of them actually, are "out of the box", and many are non-Christian in thought.

[trekz 7]

Very interesting premise! It seemed well presented. I looked at related links and generally find this theory quite intriguing. Looked at a couple book reviews, one that was somewhat critical of a couple points, (including the use of the ten based system), and another review that was glowing. I am intrigued enough that I have borrowed a copy of Atlantis Blueprint that I plan on beginning to read this weekend. Have you read it MB?

 

P.S. The library copy that I borrowed has a chapter called Fallen Angels ... on the beginning page is white feather ... (You find such interesting things in library books!)

Edited September 29, 2005 by trekz

[Madame Butterfly 0]

Well I strongly believe that Atlantis won't be found under a polar cap.

 

There is a reason why the Atlantic ocean received it's name.

 

Out of all of Plato's stories, all of them have been proven to be sound and accurate, except for Atlantis. It's the only remaining one, and why no one can believe it is possibly true is beyond me, when all of his other 'questioned" stories were proven as fact over time.

 

The last book I read on Atlantis was by Andrew Collins, "The Gateway to Atlantis".

It's written more like a disertation than a book for anyone to just pick up and read, but it does enlighten the reader to many ancient stories, and he meticulously shows how he comes to his summation as to what is the western gateway to Atlantis.

 

Click For Spoiler

Collins quest for Atlantis begins with a trail of clues left by Plato, and his journey takes him far beyond Crete and the Mediterranean, where scholars in recent times have placed the island kingdom. Collins finds signposts amongst the mummies in Egypt, in the wreakage of Roman vessals off the coasts of South and Central America, and in the African features of great stone heads in Mexico. His final destination has roused controversy among the experts, but he may indeed have found the land that history lost.

 

You may also enjoy Graham Hancock's "Fingerprints of the Gods"

Click For Spoiler

On 6th July 1960 Lt Colonel Harold Ohlmeyer, a United States Airforce Commander, sent a reply to a letter from one Professor Charles Hapgood who had requested his opinion on a feature found on a map of 1513 AD called the Piri Reis Map. Lt Colonel Ohlmeyer's reply was a bombshell. The map, showing the coastline of the east coast of the Americas and the west coast of Africa, the Colonel remarked, also seemed to show the coastline of Queen Maud Land in Antarctica free of ice - a condition it had not been in for some 9000 years!

 

In fact, it is only in recent times that modern man has been able to map this coastline using sub-surface surveying techniques that can penetrate the ice sheet that lies on top of it.

 

Ohlmeyer had no idea how a map existing in the 16th century could have got hold of such knowledge.

 

This was one of the many mysteries that lead Graham to begin his epic journey into man's past that is Fingerprints of the Gods - and it is a mystery whose solution is mindblowing.

 

Travelling first to South and Meso-America, Graham finds evidence of myths of a white-skinned 'god' named Quetzalcoatl or 'Viracocha' who came from a drowned land bringing knowledge of farming and culture after a great flood. Tied in with these myths Graham begins to crack an ancient code imprinted in these ancient tales that refer to the 'great mill' of the heavens.

 

It is an astronomical code that deals with the position of the stars over vast periods of time - a code that reveals the ancients knew far, far more than they are generally credited with. Traces of the same code appear in Egyptian myth, and it is to this desert land that Graham and Santha travel, finding there haunting parallels in architecture and ritual to the New World sites they have just left behind.

 

Moreover, the whole layout of the Giza plateau seems to point to a date many thousands of years earlier than the date of its supposed construction - a date revealed in the astronomical alignments of the Pyramids, the 'mansions of a million years', home of the god Osiris, the bringer of agriculture to the Egyptians, like Quetzalcoatl, after a flood.

 

Could the Piri Reis maps be evidence for a previously unknown complex maritime civilisation, capable of mapping the globe? A global culture, cataclysmically destroyed at the end of the ice age, remnants of which survived the devastation to pass on their knowledge to the shaken world?

 

Were the figures of Osiris and Quetzalcoatl survivors of this lost race - passing down not only advanced geographical knowledge, but a secret astronomical code veiled in myth that pointed to the devastation in the past, and warned of that which is to come?

 

From the mysterious sites of Tiahuanaco and Teotihuacan, to the enduring enigmatic Sphinx and pyramids of Egypt, the grandiose Nazca lines of Peru to the stark primal beauty of the Osireion at Abydos, this is a journey both around the globe and into the heart of the true prehistoric origins of man. Part adventure, part detective story, this book will force you to revaluate your beliefs of the past.

[Madame Butterfly 0]

As for the Avebury premis, I love the idea that somehow a record was kept, and it can show man how this earth works and evolves.