ARCHAEOLOGY: SPANIARDS DISCOVER FORGOTTEN EUPHRATES CITY

(by Paola Del Vecchio)
(ANSAmed) - MADRID - They have renamed it the
city recovered from the Euphrates and it is found in the Syrian
enclave of Tall Qabr on the banks of the river that, with the
Tigris, was the centre of the birth of civilisation in
Mesopotamia. It is a circularly planned city, dating back to
2,600 years before Christ. Galician archaeologists from an
expedition from the University of Coruna made the discovery, led
by Jean Luis Montero, who identified two layers dating back to
from the IV to first millennium before Christ. Since 2008 the
multidisciplinary expedition, made up of 20 people, has been
working in the area known as the Hill of the Tomb in the
Euphrates Valley on an excavation campaign in collaboration with
the Syrian government in which various universities are
participating with Spain's Superior Centre for Scientific
Research (CSIC) and the Syrian Ministry of Culture.
The expedition, according to what Montero told the media,
located the remains of the city, dated to 4,500 years ago, and
that of a fortress dating back to 1,300 years before Christ.
Among the artefacts uncovered, a collection of ceramics that
will allow researchers to understand how life was in an epoch
privy of information. There was also a stamp of enormous
artistic beauty, corresponding to those used by dignitaries,
Montero assured. It is a clue that indicates the high
possibility of finding the cities archive, according to what the
excavation supervisors say, which would help us understand the
era's political and diplomatic structure. Regarding the city,
its localisation was possible thanks to geo-radar, carried out
in collaboration with the University of Vigo, in Galicia, a
technique which allows for preliminary work without digging. The
surprise is that it was built on a circular plan, Montero
observed. It is the second city documented in the area of the
Euphrates on this plan. The other is some 200 kilometres from
these ruins, and it was thought that the circular plan was
something out of the ordinary. The results of the expedition,
defined as a historic find, will soon be presented in Madrid.
According to Montero, the concepts that we take for granted in
the history books could be rewritten. It is not Pompeii, but
according to the archaeologist, it is comparable
proportionately. The objective of the expedition is to determine
what the concept of border was from the IV millennium to the
Byzantine period. The city could represent the passage from the
rural cycle to the urban cycle, in other words the first cities
in history and show the border of the Mari kingdom, the ancient
rivals of Babylonia. The Galician archaeologists will continue
to work in the area next year. The director of the project hopes
to bring the walls to the surface as well as its secrets as a
dam threatens to flood this piece of history. For this reason
the team of researchers is preparing a report to sent to UNESCO,
with an international appeal to protect the archaeological area
and to ask at the same time for more resources and people to
uncover the buried city. (ANSAmed).