Archaeologists recently explored a long-lost Silk Road city at the bottom of a lake, uncovering a trove of artifacts and a medieval cemetery.
Lake Issyk-Kul sits in the northeast of the Kyrgyz Republic, also known as Kyrgyzstan. It’s the country’s biggest lake and the second-largest high mountain lake in the world, and beneath its surface hides a centuries-old watery grave.
Researchers recently conducted an underwater archaeological expedition in Issyk-Kul’s northwest to investigate the remains of a city that used to sit along the iconic Silk Road. The team found the remains of a medieval graveyard, ceramics, and various buildings, confirming the presence of the ancient settlement.A Pompeii-like tragedy
The site was “a city or a large commercial agglomeration on one of the important sections of the Silk Road,” Valery Kolchenko, a researcher at the Institute of History, Archeology, and Ethnology of the National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic who took part in the investigation, said in a statement by the Russian Geographical Society, which also contributed researchers to the project. “At the beginning of the 15th century, as a result of a terrible earthquake, the city went under the waters of the lake.
