Tourists who visit Turkey often visit the beautiful place called Pomukkale. These are snow-white lime deposits formed from water with a high content of calcium salts:
There are a lot of people here at the peak of the tourist flow. But in the off-season - you can meet only a few people. One of my like-minded people took advantage of this, but not to visit these unusual geological landscapes, but to inspect the ruins of the ancient city of Hierapolis, located slightly higher on this mountain, from which water streams flow.
Schematic layout of the city. It is believed that limestone outcrops have always been here. But later I will show that this may not be so.
I propose to see the views of this city without tourists and make sure that the city was destroyed not by the Thracian earthquake of 1354, but by the processes associated with mudflows. Or an earthquake - it was one of the factors of destruction. From this position, let's see this photo report:
Promotional video:
General view of the ruins of the city and a view of the amphitheater. The amphitheater has an entrance to the underground part. But it is covered with bars.
The impression is that everything was destroyed by a wave or streams of water. There are places where the columns were left standing (or they were installed anew) and they tried to fold, reconstruct part of the buildings as if from a designer.
Here you can clearly see that the blocks are different in color, many are out of place. That this is a reconstruction. On the third slide, you can see that the reconstruction was wrong, the arch was folded and the weight of the blocks was not taken into account - the plate cracked. Complete ignorance of sopromat. There should be no load bearing horizontal masonry suspended in the air under the arch.
In general, excavations of the city began only at the end of the 19th century. in 1887. As I wrote earlier in other articles, no one needed history for hundreds of years. In general, the process of reconstruction is understandable with the naked eye and is of little interest to us. Let's better see the result of the excavation:
In some places, fragments of columns and blocks from the walls lie under the soil layer.
Arches were dug up. The photograph shows how deep they were. Cultural layers, archaeologists say.
The entrance to this structure was at a depth of 2-3 m from the current ground level.
But these are all old excavations, moreover, they were not completely completed. And, such an impression, in order to find entrances, untouched premises.
Already modern excavations. They dug up sarcophagi. There are large territories with sarcophagi. Probably, there was a necropolis. Most of them were broken and opened long ago. What archaeologists find in the excavated is unknown. Probably nothing, because the necropolis has long been plundered.
The first photo shows how far the soil was removed in front of the entrance and inside the area with columns (on the second and third slides, compare with the level of the soil on which the trees grow). My opinion is that this soil was brought from the water sources above. The fourth slide - clearly visible ground with stones and debris, which covers the city.
Photos suggesting that lime masses could appear here later, after the destruction of the city. Otherwise, what is the point in constantly accumulating sediments, in the water to put a tomb?
There are very few photographs of the excavations and the original state of the city. Some of the found:
My opinion: the city was destroyed not so much by time and earthquakes, but destroyed by some catastrophic process of the descent of water streams from the mountains. Many mountains could once have formed during the large-scale combustion of silanes (silane oil). You can read the article about this hypothesis here.
During this process, quartzite rocks, sand or various rock conglomerates and a very large amount of water are formed. There is information that under each mountain in the past there were accumulations of similar silicas. They were in equilibrium until the time when the pole shift, the fall of a large body, or the expansion stage of the Earth occurred. When cracks formed in the earth's crust, silanes came to the surface with the formation of water and sand, which washed away everything in its path. Silanes, like hydrocarbons, are always formed in the subsoil. And just like hydrocarbons can accumulate.
The release of water in the Pamukkale spring is a residual process. Like all mountain rivers and streams that are not fed by glaciers.
Author: sibved