Sunken city discovered in Kyrgyzstan lake was a medieval hotspot on the Silk Road — until an earthquake wiped it out
Archaeologists have discovered a medieval city submerged under the waters of a salt lake in northeast Kyrgyzstan.
The location was an important stop on one of the Silk Roads between China and the West in the medieval era. But one town is believed to have been hit by a major earthquake in the 15th century, causing it to sink underwater.
Sunken city
According to The government of KyrgyzstanIssyk-Kul is one of the deepest lakes in the world, with parts reaching 2,300 feet (700 meters) below the surface. It has no river mouth and is slightly salty.
The researchers studied four submerged sites, between 1 and 4 m deep, near the northwest shore of the lake – the location in the Middle Ages of a mainly Muslim settlement called Toru-Aygyr.
“The monument studied is a city or large commercial town located on one of the important sections of the Silk Road,” explains the archaeologist. Valerie Kolchenkothe head of the Kyrgyz contingent of researchers participating in the expedition said in the statement.
“At the beginning of the 15th century, following a terrible earthquake, the city was submerged by the waters of the lake… the tragedy can be compared to that of Pompeii.”
The team discovered the remains of several now-submerged buildings made from kiln-fired bricks, including one that contained a millstone, evidence that it was once a grain mill.
They also found collapsed stone structures, wooden beams and the remains of a public building with exterior decorations that may have been a mosque or Islamic school, known as a madrassa.
Medieval Muslim cemetery
One of the underwater sites revealed the remains of a Muslim cemetery that covered an area of about 14 acres (6 hectares), or about the size of 11 football fields.
The team recovered the remains of two of the dead from the cemetery and found that their faces were facing Mecca, which is now in Saudi Arabia – a common practice in Muslim burials.
Archaeologists believe the cemetery dates from around the 13th century, when Islam was introduced to the region by the Golden Horde, a Mongol state that ruled much of Central Asia from the 1240s to 1502.
Before that, the region had been ruled since the 10th century by the Karakhanids, a Turkish dynasty centered in Kyrgyzstan, the statement said.
Toru-Aygyr was a multicultural city when it was founded before the 13th century, expedition leader Maxim Menshikovof the Institute of Archeology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, said in the statement. “People here practiced various religions: pagan Tengrianism, Buddhism, Nestorian Christianity,” he said. But the introduction of Islam changed the character of the city, he explained, as people preferred to trade with other Muslims.
Another site in the sunken city yielded several pieces of medieval Muslim pottery, including a large intact khum, or water jar, that researchers plan to recover in a future expedition.
Three burials were also discovered nearby, but are believed to have been in an earlier, non-Islamic cemetery.
Researchers also discovered remains of mudbrick buildings and carried out underwater drilling at the sites to collect sediment cores that can be used to reconstruct stages of the city’s development, the statement said.
