Folklore — Türkiye
Folklore — Türkiye. 3 places in the catalogue, each with coordinates, the story behind it and a danger level from white to black.
Mount Nemrut
A summit in south-eastern Turkey where Antiochus I of Commagene built himself a tomb in the first century BC and set up nine-metre statues of the gods and of himself. Earthquakes knocked the heads from the bodies, and they now lie separately on the terraces, facing different ways. The tomb itself has never been found: the tumulus of loose gravel cannot be excavated without collapsing.
Mount Ararat
A mountain in eastern Turkey that biblical tradition names as the resting place of the ark. Searches have run since the nineteenth century and have not stopped: in 1949 aerial photography recorded a dark structure on the glacier, known as the Ararat Anomaly, whose images were only declassified in 1995. Geologists explain it as an outcrop. The mountain is closed to unrestricted climbing, which has not deterred anyone.
Göbekli Tepe
A sanctuary in south-eastern Turkey around 11,500 years old — older than farming, pottery or the wheel. Its circles of T-shaped pillars carved with animals upended assumptions about what came first, the temple or the town.