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Göbekli Tepe

added28 August 2026

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.

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37.22361, 38.92167

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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.

86 km away

CryptidYellow

Lake Van and Its Monster

Turkey's largest lake, strongly alkaline and nearly lifeless — which makes the monster story an odd one. In 1997 a university teacher, Ünal Kozak, filmed a dark object moving across the surface; the footage went round Turkish television and he wrote a book about the creature. A statue of the monster stands on the waterfront at Van.

376 km away

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Baalbek

A Roman temple complex in Lebanon standing on a base of megaliths weighing up to 800 tonnes. Exactly how those blocks were moved is not settled — which is what fuels the stream of alternative theories about them.

434 km away

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