

Shipwrecks Under Istanbul - fitzwatermellow
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-big-dig

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gkya
I'm a Turkish citizen, Istanbulite, now 23 years old. I have happened to
witness all of this in person in this city. I wear two identities, if I can
say so, one is that I'm from the bosphorus, Bogazici, and the other is that I
belong to the near east. This sort of findings delight me a lot. It proves
that at the end of the day the human is to measure, that he be the one to be
measured, and that after tens of thousands of years all we have been able to
do is better tools, nothing more. Regarding the Erdogan and the rest, he's
just the tip of the iceberg. The Turkish have been miserable all the time, and
recently more, because, as a turkish proverb proceeds to say, _the feet became
the head_. If it wasn't him to be made so powerful by the crowd of angry
ignorant fundamentalists, it would be someone else. In this country of
genocides, now one is active against the population of _reasonables_.

~~~
afsina
What makes you the "reasonable" and others "ignorant fundamentalists" again?
The hubris of elitism has never ceased to amaze me.

~~~
acqq
"Fundamentalist" as in "religious fundamentalist."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_fundamentalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_fundamentalism)

Compare their goals to then successful work of Ataturk in 20th century in
Turkey:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atat%C3%BCrk's_Reforms](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atat%C3%BCrk's_Reforms)

~~~
afsina
Also on the subject, sadly, no matter his visions and good intentions, he was
a victim of perfectionism and elitism. No matter what the outcome is, Ataturk
was totalitarian at the end and some of his reforms were either unnecessary or
executed terribly.

Besides, what is the point? Why are we comparing those two again?

~~~
gkya
You're right in your point that M. Kemal was a victim, but he was not a victim
of perfectionism and elitism. He was a victim of some blind nationalism, his
admiring of the Occident and his dismissal of the parity of different
cultures. He and other people thought that the Europe was better than the
other, whereas in fact it was merely different. The revolutions were top down,
fascistic, and forced. As you will see, if you read in an objective manner,
some history, nearly none the revolutions have changed the things for the
better for all. There are still many turks that sustain that Kurdish the
language was invented in the 70's, that all the languages descended from
turkish, that American indigenous people, Italians, Sumerians and other
ancient people of the asia minore were of Turkish descent, that Armenians are
the ones that made a genocide at the beginning of the 20th century, etc.
People identify themselves basing on lies here. What gives a totalitarian
person room to do what he wants? A bunch of hero-gazers that have nothing to
base any thought on. See that I do not call people stupid or smart, many
ignorant are smart. It's good when one knows that he knows or that he does not
know, but the evil is the ignorance of the ignorance, which is our ill as a
community of the Near east.

~~~
afsina
Oh we do agree in the blind nationalism issue, no objections here. I do agree
ignorance of ignorance is a terrible thing as well. However, unlike you I try
to refrain blanket statements on people of near east, or any other place.

~~~
gkya
Doesn't the fact that I'm a person of the near east justify me trying to
reflect upon _my_ people? I mean, given that I live here, I get to, and have
to interact with this people, that I walk among real islamic fundamentalists,
real PKK terrorists, real corrupt politicians and their actual supporters? I
agree that it's not reasonable to make blanket statements, but I do indeed
show the people I make statements about. All I do is to reflect upon the
society that I belong to, that I live within and that affects me in the most
direct manner.

~~~
noskynethere
Not if you seek objectivity. You have your own biases _, which do not go away
because you live /interact there.

It is common for people closest to a subject to have the biggest blind spots.

_ the wonderful nature of our own biases, perceptive and cognitive, is that it
very difficult for us to see them.

~~~
acqq
There is another direction too: farher people should also be vary of not
ending with thinking "let them eat cake," from the position of somebody not
directly affected by the real problems of those who live them.

------
paganel
> That’s when they found the remains of a Neolithic dwelling, dating from
> around 6000 B.C. It was previously unknown that anyone had lived on the site
> of the old city before around 1300 B.C. (...) In the Stone Age, the water
> level of the Bosporus was far lower than it is now; there’s a chance that
> the people who left those prints might have been able to walk from Anatolia
> to Europe.

That part is really interesting. For those HN-ers not interested in those
times, there is the "Black Sea deluge hypothesis"
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_hypothesis))
which says something like this:

> The Black Sea deluge is a hypothesized catastrophic rise in the level of the
> Black Sea circa 5600 BC due to waters from the Mediterranean Sea breaching a
> sill in the Bosporus strait

~~~
gerbal
Doggerland[1] and Sundaland[2] were also above the sea at that point. I wonder
if there were neolithic cities, the precursors to Uruk, that are lost beneath
the sea.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland)

------
kirk21
"Byzantine shipwrecks found during the construction of the first-ever tunnel
under the Bosporus held up work for years."

Why does it have to take that long to dig up these ships and start the works?

~~~
gkya
Man, it's tedious work to unearth those stuff. One cannot use big shovels and
machines, sometimes you have to work with fingertips and painting-brushes. And
the so-called old-city (what I hate to call Fatih) is, I mean whenever you dig
a hole you find something. By my school there is the constructions site for
another entrance to the already-existent metro station, and it is still not
completed after maybe two years. And all they wanted was to dig down a single
storey entrance that then linked to the one that already was there. Then they
found some 2500 yrs-old Byzantine sarcophagi, and, you may guess the rest...

------
leaveyou
The ridiculous lack of pictures in this article makes Jules Verne books feel
like albums.

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prawn
Only part way through, but what an incredible story, both from the perspective
of the historical findings and the modern progress in transport for locals.

