'They are barbaric': Turkey prepares to flood 12,000-year-old city to build dam
Source: The Guardian
After the half-hour drive from Batman in south-east Turkey, the ancient city of Hasankeyf, which sits on the banks of the Tigris River, appears as an oasis.
Hasankeyf is thought to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth, dating as far back as 12,000 years and containing thousands of caves, churches and tombs.
But this jewel of human history will soon be lost; most of the settlement is about to be flooded as part of the highly controversial Ilisu dam project.
Construction work on the dam and its hydroelectric power plant started in 2006 and Hasankeyf is now just weeks away from destruction, despite a fight by residents and environmental campaigners to save it. The Turkish government has given residents until 8 October to evacuate.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/sep/12/they-are-barbaric-turkey-prepares-to-flood-12000-year-old-city-to-build-dam
RKP5637
(67,031 posts)democratisphere
(17,235 posts)to government. Further, history does nor seem to matter to younger generations today, I see it all the time.
TheBlackAdder
(28,073 posts)Polybius
(15,238 posts)Wow, I never knew that. Pretty cool name.
LeftInTX
(24,549 posts)eissa
(4,238 posts)And this doesn't surprise me given Turkey's atrocious history with its minority population, and any archaeological site that pre-dates its Ottoman takeover.
LeftInTX
(24,549 posts)SharonAnn
(13,766 posts)I was just a child, but it was horrifying. At least there was an urgency to save some of the cultural artifacts from the area. And those artifacts were HUGE.
zentrum
(9,865 posts)The_jackalope
(1,660 posts)In order to keep driving to work.
I don't see much difference.
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)12000 year old ones are pretty hard to find
Thunderbeast
(3,382 posts)People from Alaska, Mexico, and the Great Plains gathered there for centuries to trade. It is estimated that indigenous cultures have been there for 10,000 years.
It was flooded in 1957 by The Dalles Dam. The tribes and the salmon have never recovered.
The Turks do not have a monopoly on "barbarism"