New research overturns theories about Lake Van

New data obtained during excavations on Van Castle has revealed that Lake Van was much smaller 7,000 years ago and has risen over time to reach its current size. 

"The people of Van were living three meters under this level in 5,000 B.C. and the lake was located below its current place. The level of the lake is higher than it was in the past," said Erkan Konyar, the head of the Istanbul University Faculty of Literature Van Region History and Archaeology Center, which is heading excavations on the site. "This is, of course, a debated issue. Maybe there were earlier-era settlements like the Urartian settlements located one or two kilometers off shore in Lake Van." 

Lake Van is 430 kilometers long and 450 meters deep, while the excavations by Konyar's team had presently reached a level of two meters below the surface.

"This is very important to back the archaeological and geological data," said the academic.

"Suggestions that the Mad?r Bastion was a harbor has been refuted by this year's archaeological data because Lake Van never reached [the level] of rocky places in Van. It did not rise - it was always more below. The Mad?r Bastion was not a harbor and Tushba was not a coastal town, according to data we obtained this year," he said, referring to Tushba (Tu?pa in modern Turkish), the capital of the Iron Age Urartian Kingdom.

Continuing excavations

Universities have been conducting excavations to discover more information about the Urartians between 860 and 590 B.C. in what is now eastern Turkey, Armenia and Iran.

Excavations around Old Van City, Van Castle and Lake Van have provided important information about the history of the region, which stretches back 7,000 years.

Konyar said they...