Turkey: Discover the world's oldest dam

Turkish archaeologists have discovered a dam built 3,246 years ago, located deep beneath the ancient village of Alacahoyuk in Central Turkey. This dam was built during the Hittites' reign.

From the early 20th century, Turkish archaeologists began conducting excavations and searching for ancient city relics under the rule of Hittites from 2000 to 1000 BC, at the village entrance Alacahoyuk, about 160 km east of the capital Ankara. The group of archaeologists has discovered the inner tombs containing many valuable assets of the Hittites dynasty such as bowls, plates, jewelry, gold statues, bronze . These are now exhibited. presented at Anatolia Civilization Museum in Ankara.

In 2002, when studying the swamp 2 km away, the Ankara University team discovered this ancient dam. To repair and put into use the dam over 3,000 years old, archaeologists had to dredge 2.5 million cubic meters of mud and restore damaged parts of the dam. What is particularly remarkable is that this restored ancient structure is still capable of storing 30,000 cubic meters of water from groundwater.

According to experts, the dam walls are built of natural stone and clay like modern construction techniques, the only difference is that today we use cement to build dams. do not use clay as ancient masons. This new finding will annually attract thousands of visitors to the Alacahoyuk village.

Alacahoyuk ancient village (Photo: math.umn.edu)