Lake Iznik in Turkey has been hold onto some secrets for century . Thanks to some aerial photographs , archaeologist have realized that the Turkish lake hold back the deep-set ruin of an ancient church building and perhaps even a pagan temple , Live Sciencereports .
Back in 2014 , the local government of Bursa Province took some aerial survey shots of the lake in the town of ? znik in northerly Turkey . Mustafa ? ahin , a professor of archaeology at Uluda ? University in Turkey , fall across the images and quickly realise that an strange social organisation was lurking beneath readable waters : the ruin of a vast church.?ahin and the Lake Iznik Excavation Archive have been rooting around the waters ever since , slowly but surely ravel the floor of this mystical structure .
Over four twelvemonth after it was first discovered , the situation is now being turned into an submersed archaeological museum andhopes to earn a placeon the UNESCO World Heritage List . More recent excavation work on the area is also hinting that the church , date stamp to when this part of Turkey was part of the Roman conglomerate , might have been build on top of an ancient pagan synagogue .
The recessed ruins put down just 3 meter ( 10 foot ) below the surface of the pee and about 50 time ( 160 feet ) from the shore . Around the edge of the structure , there are many rough stones , which could bring home the bacon some clues as to the story of the church service ’s dying .
“ This shows that the body structure collapsed . ? znik has blend through many earthquake that destroyed such structures , ” prof ? ahin narrate theDo?an News Agencyin 2014 . “ The well recognize is the one that occurred in 740 CE . Our first observations show that the structure collapsed in this earthquake and that the coastal side was submerse . The church was subsequently not rebuilt . ”
The church , or basilica , was build under the Romans sometime towards the close of the 4th century CE , when the town was called Nicaea . Over the ages , Nicaea has been home to legion civilisation , including the Bithynian Empire , the Roman Empire , and the Ottoman Empire . As such , it ’s also been embellish with a huge amount of influence from both Islam and Christianity ; the easterly world and the Western world .
Nicaea is perhaps best know for the First Council of Nicaea in 325 CE ( or for being conspicuously alluded to in Dan Brown’sThe Da Vinci Code ) . After Constantine became the first Christian leader of the Roman Empire , he organized a meeting of hundreds of bishops and religious leaders to attempt to formalize a concentrate ism of Christianity . The decisions and ideas that leap from the council help oneself to work many of the core theological ideas that Christianity still hold .
