Maksim Sorokin photographed three sarcophagus-shaped stone boxes walled up in a rock not far from the Turkish city of Kemer. I asked him to send me the exact coordinates of the find, which he soon did (many thanks to him for that). I was going to look at this place on a geological map of Turkey in order to understand what rocks are exposed here and how old they are.
It is located here:
The coastal rock looks quite ancient and strong, I would even take the liberty of claiming it was composed of intrusive rocks, as evidenced by the shape of the cape on which the find was made. But how ancient were the boulders of conglomerates or breccias in which the stone boxes were walled up? This was the main question. After all, they fell from somewhere above. In appearance, the stone blocks with "sarcophagi" are quite strong, but at a distance you cannot touch them with your hands and you cannot beat off a piece from them.
My attempt to find and download geological maps of the Kemer region on the previously used website of the Turkish government was unsuccessful, probably due to the aggravation of Russian-Turkish relations. It is good that I was able to find in my archives one geological map of the Antalya region in a scale of 1: 500,000, downloaded earlier from the same resource. According to this map, the cape south of Kemer, on which the find was made, is composed of Cretaceous (145-66 mln. years ago) harzburgites (rather strong ultrabasic intrusive rocks, which represent the material of the mantle removed along thrusts).
Besides them, Upper Pliocene? (3.9-2.6 million years ago) travertines, but the rocks of the blocks that have fallen into the sea are not at all like them. I have studied travertines in the Antalya region and know their appearance well. I have also worked for quite a long time on ultrabasic rocks in Kamchatka, the Urals and Central Asia. Theoretically, block rocks can represent tectonic melange or, rather, olistostromes, which are widespread in subthrust zones in the field of ultrabasic rocks.
Here is how olistostromes are defined in geological reference books:
“Chaotic accumulations of redeposited unsorted debris (olistoliths) of g. P. In volume from several cm3 to thousand m3, cemented by a fine-grained mass (pelitic and psammoaleurite). The p. Is composed, almost the same age with the enclosing strata … The maximum known power. O. reaches 2000 m. They are known in the Alps, Corsica, Italy, Iran, Morocco, Turkey, and other places, where they are often described under other names (Gorier, Rentier, 1968)."
Promotional video:
“Chaotically piled up accumulations of redeposited unsorted debris decomp. rocks cemented by fine-grained clay-silty mass; occur as a result of landslide and landslide processes in underwater conditions, as well as due to the removal of coarse material by turbidity flows. O. are very heterogeneous in composition, because they contain blocks and lumps of various sizes from rocks of decomp. age. The term O. was proposed by Italian. geologist E. Beneo (1956) on the example of breccias developed in the fleche of Yuzh. Italy. Later, O. were described in other regions of the Mediterranean fold belt, incl. in the Alps, Tell-Atlas, Taurus, Zagros, in the Caucasus.
The wide distribution of O. is found in almost all folded belts … O. form bodies sometimes with a volume of several. thousand m3 … There is a definite connection between many O. with tectonic covers (thrusts - A. K.), since in most cases they arise due to the separation of the frontal parts of moving nappes (thrusts - A. K.). O. is formed predominantly. during the period of active tectonic. movements at the stage of closing marginal or internal. pestilence. basins in the collision of lithospheric plates, most often island arcs with continents."
Looking at the blocks shown in the photographs, into which the stone "sarcophagi" are embedded, one can confirm that they resemble olistostromes. Their origin is also understandable - they fell from the underthrust zone, which is very characteristic of ultrabasic rocks and is located somewhere higher up the slope. Of course, to prove this, detailed geological studies on the ground are needed. But the alternatives for this point of view are small - it could be modern cement or a historical mudflow. In the first case, it is not clear what was built here and why stone boxes were embedded in the cement. In the second case, it is not clear why the mudflow is presented as separate blocks. So the olistostromic hypothesis remains the main working version. In this case, stone "sarcophagi" can be Cretaceous (145-66 million years ago) olistoliths.
Author: kadykchanskiy