clipped from: www.turkishdailynews.com.tr In this central Turkish village, peasants and archaeologists celebrate a unique achievement -- a 3,246-year-old dam, once buried under mud and slime, is back in service to irrigate farmlands.
The dam is a heritage of the Hittites, who ruled over vast areas of the Middle East from 2000 to 1000 BC, fought Pharaoh Rameses The Great, among others, and built some of the biggest cities of the time in the heart of Anatolia, the Asian part of modern Turkey.
The tombs of the settlement, its foundations still guarded by two imposing stone lions, have yielded some of the most precious Hittite treasures -- plates, jewelry, bronze and gold statuettes now on display at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara.
The dam, however, was unknown until 2002, when a team of Ankara University archaeologists began a new dig in marshlands about two kilometers away.
Assisted by the government and local authorities, the team removed 2.5 million cubic meters of mud from the site to recover the dam, and, after some restoration, put it back into operation.
It came complete with an antique purifying pool to make the water drinkable, as well as irrigation channels.
The dam, he explained, is the only one surviving from 10 dams built by the Hittite king Tudhaliyas IV, in 1240 B.C.
The king ordered the dams built after he was forced to import wheat from Egypt to save his people from famine after drought hit the Anatolian farmlands.
The dam wall of stone and natural clay was built in a way that experts say strikingly resembles modern-day construction techniques.