Turkey's largest 1,500-year-old port discovered

It seemed like a familiar scene of a dilapidated city: abandoned buildings, ramshackle walls, piled up garbage and empty bottles of wine.

Ruined port area.(Photo: AP)

The scene is intact from more than 1,500 years ago. Engineers discovered the ruins of this ancient Roman port while digging an underground train line in Istanbul, Turkey.

Like other historic cities in Roman times, Istanbul is also home to many important archaeological sites. But the old port discovered last year in the outskirts of Yenikapi has a completely different scale: It became the largest archaeological discovery in Istanbul history.

Archaeologists call it " Theodosius Harbor ", taking its name from the Roman emperor and Byzantine in 395. They hope to take a closer look at the ancient trading life of the city once named Constantinople. , and the capital of Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires.

Dr. Cemal Pulak
(Photo: deguwa.org)

To date, 17 archaeologists, 3 architects and about 350 workers have found a church, a gate to the city and 8 boats sunk.

Dr. Cemal Pulak, at Texas A&M University, believes that these boats were overthrown in a major storm. He said wooden boats filled a gap in the history of boat construction, by a combination of old and new techniques in making them.

The port area is very large. Around, the workers found many pieces of pottery and animal bones. All are garbage, such as a broken piece of pottery that sailors throw away from the animal's ship or bone that a slaughterhouse nearby throws into the port.

Thousands of objects are also dredged from the bottom of the Bosporus sea. Only a small amount of this is worth museums and research, the rest will be buried again.

These relics also help researchers to understand how ancient and transporting wine and olive oil in ancient jars were carried.

MT