Ancient cities at the bottom of the Aral Sea

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The Aral Sea is a former closed salt lake in Central Asia, on the border of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The Aral Sea appeared, according to official history, about 20-24 thousand years ago. But is it really so?

I'll start with a comment from chispa1707: in the year 72-76, my father's friend, a mechanic-meliorator who worked in the Ellikalinsky district of Karakalpakia on the development of virgin lands (it seems under rice cultivation), returning from his shift, said: We remove the dune with a bulldozer, and there were beds! It turns out that people used to live and there was water! a desert, At about the same time, the captain of the tug, a distant relative, who was ferrying barges from Muynak to Aralsk, noted with surprise that buildings were visible at the bottom - the ruins of houses and duval. Then the problem of the drying up of the Aral Sea was already manifested, and he noted that it means that in the past the sea was even smaller. Recently, scientists have found a mosque on the dried bottom.

It turns out that there are examples of the presence of ancient buildings on the former bottom of the Aral Sea, backed up by archaeologists:

Aral-asar

Chronology of the drying up of the Aral Sea

Aral-Asar is a settlement or settlement of the XIV century. Found at the bottom of a dried up section of the Aral Sea.

To the west of the settlement, remains of rice fields were found. The settlement is dated according to the discovered coins of the Golden Horde period.

In 2001, not far from the already dried island of Barsakelmes, a joint archaeological expedition of the Institute of Archeology named after V. I. A. Margulan and Kyzylorda State University named after Korkyt-Ata, under the guidance of T. Mamiev, Candidate of Historical Sciences, examined a large, well-preserved mausoleum and other fragments of an ancient highly developed settlement discovered by residents of the Aral village of Karateren. The find was located in the area of depths of 18 - 20 m of the former sea and was sensational.

Then, in 2004, the second mausoleum was examined by an archaeological expedition of the Korkyt-Ata Kyzylorda State University under the leadership of Professor A. Aidosov.

The finds were previously attributed by scientists to the period of the XII-XV centuries.

The find is located 63 kilometers north of the village of Karateren and 370 kilometers from Kyzylorda. The village of Karateren, not so long ago, stood on the shores of the Aral Sea, but now it is 120 kilometers away from it.

According to scientists, the settlement, conditionally named Aral-Asar, covers an area of 6 hectares. The building structures of the city today are practically indistinguishable, they are washed out and smoothed by the waters of the Aral Sea. On the other hand, archaeologists discovered a huge number of household items: millstones, ceramic vessels and their fragments, fragments of iron and bronze items.

Found 14 millstones and adjacent premises for storing flour - humdans. Apparently, flour-grinding production was developed.

There was here an irrigation canal 2 - 2, 5 meters wide, passing through the settlement, testifies to a developed irrigation system and the fact that the inhabitants pulled water here, apparently from the channels of the ancient channels of the Amu Darya or Syr Darya for many tens of kilometers.

Approximate coordinates: 46 '02' north latitude; 60'25 'east longitude.

A tree trunk on the dried bottom of the Aral Sea. Consequently, the sea is very young, formed by catastrophic processes, and which disappeared (dried up) not because of human economic activity.

On June 19 - 20, 1990, aerial photography was carried out at a level of the Big Sea of about 38 m abs., That is, after a decrease in the level by 15 m. water and lying on dry areas of the seabed. The various figures consisted of single or several parallel lines of unusual shapes. The unusualness was in the too correct, not accidental form of many of them. And this view suggested an artificial origin. Therefore, the figures were given the name "Traces of unknown activity at the bottom of the Aral Sea" or simply "Aral Tracks". In the images, they cover an area of about 500 km2, but they seem to continue beyond the aerial photography. Before the sea level began to fall, the figures were at a depth of 10-15 m, and were not visible from the sea surface.

For different figures, the lines have a length from 100 - 200 m to 6 - 8 km, and their width, strictly constant within the limits of each figure, varies from 2 to 100 m. Some figures may contain up to several dozen parallel lines resembling a comb stroke up to 1 - 2 km.

Under the water, the lines look like black stripes with narrow light edging, similar to the dumps of the soil of earthen canals, and when they dry on the shore, they become whitish, low-contrast. The black color of the lines along some of their length when entering a drained coast indicates their concave relief, similar to the cross-section of canals, and about their fullness with water. On the basis of indirect signs in the photographs and measurements of two figures on the ground, it was established that the lines of the figures are furrows with an initial depth of up to 0.4 - 0.5 m, formed in the sandy-silty soil of the seabed. Light spots on the surface of the water are sun glare. The black lines appearing against their background are the convex parts of the furrows in the form of soil dumps rising above the water surface.

The age of the furrows, if it is assumed to be estimated on the images by the degree of swelling of their contours and taking into account the relatively low rate of accumulation of bottom organic sediments, can be roughly determined within a range of up to several hundred years. And the pictures of the mutual intersection of furrows (up to four times in succession) indicate cases of their sequential formation (holding) at different times over the previously created ones.

Scientists' official explanation: this is not the first time the sea is leaving. But I have a different version.

On old maps, the Caspian Sea looks different than it does now. A huge number of cities were located where the desert is now.

Most likely, this event happened just recently:

The outline of the Caspian coast has changed. From the east, it retreated and moved south. But a huge mass of water remained where the Aral Sea is now drying up. Those. all the structures found at the bottom of the Aral Sea were cities and villages in the deltas of rivers flowing into the ancient Caspian.

There is such a map overlay:

The western part of the border of the ancient Caspian Sea and the present one roughly coincide. The Volga delta coincides. But the eastern outline of the ancient Caspian Sea goes far beyond the Aral Sea. It was, perhaps, a single body of water. It is not clear how then settlements of farmers could have been. Perhaps this overlap is wrong. Not to scale. Or indeed, the level of the Aral Sea fluctuates. And people moved, settled after the leaving sea.

Another option is that this is a very ancient map with much more ancient outlines of the Caspian.

Here the Aral Sea is different. Although the Caspian Sea is already in its present form.

Clickable. 1723 Joachim Ottens. There is a compass in the center of the map, hence north on the map to the left. The Caspian is also different. But it differs both from the real outlines and from the maps of the 16th century.

I do not exclude that there were several reasons leading to the change in the outlines of the seas of this region. All in varying degrees of catastrophe and duration in time.

Another assumption that the maps of the 16th century, where the Caspian has an oval shape (stretched from west to east), and not from north to south, as it is now, is the wrong location of the Caspian on the maps. The compilers redrawn from various sources and did not pay attention to the location of the north:

Here the north is still there, on the left. And this map may have been carried over later as seen.

Then, according to this assumption, it turns out that the Aral Sea previously (recently) did not exist at all. The settlements and finds found at its bottom are the remains of ancient cities, which are depicted in many on these maps. And there were indeed many cities.

I had several articles about some of the cities and fortresses in this region:

Fortresses of ancient Khorezm

Ruins of the ancient city of Merv

Antediluvian Margiana

Based on this new information about the ancient cities on the former bottom of the Aral Sea, I have not yet formed an unambiguous opinion on the shape and geography of the ancient Caspian Sea. Maybe someone will share their thoughts in the comments?

Another fact is that in this previously flourishing region (well, people could not set up so many cities in the desert) something catastrophic happened, they say not only deserts, sands, but the level of soil and soil salinity:

There are several opinions. Official: this is the bottom of the ancient sea. Another, alternative opinion, that it was the salt of the flood waters that stood in these places was deposited. But there are many lowlands, valleys, where such a picture is not observed. Although there should also be water.

My opinion is that this fact is associated with the release of saline and mineral masses of underground water. And it is in these places in large numbers. I mentioned about underground oceans here … As you can see on the maps, there are saline soils and soils even in the north. I think this is due precisely to the powerful outcrops of salt and mineral deep waters to the surface (from underground lakes, seas). It is possible that it was they who fed and maintained the level of the Aral Sea, and not the Syr Darya and Amu Darya rivers.