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Murder to hoover

Not a carpet. Tile floor rucked up by centuries of earthquakes.

This family in Turkey wanted to build a hotel on land they owned, but because it was in a historical section they had to do an archaeological survey to see if there were any ruins. There were. And how. Traces of over a dozen different civilizations were found down there.

So they built the hotel on giant pylons right over the ruins, and the archaeologists just kept working. Pretty cool.

That tile floor is 4th Century and the largest single mosaic ever found.

Yeah, that’s right. I’m reduced to sourcing an article from the Daily Mail.

Comments


Comment from Some Vegetable
Time: March 31, 2021, 8:46 pm

I built this hotel up from nothing. When I started here, it was a swamp. Other hotel owners said I was daft to build a hotel on the swamp. But I built it all the same, just to show ’em. It sank into the swamp. So, I built a second one. That burned down, fell over, then sank in the swamp. So, I built a third one. That sank into the swamp. So, I built a fourth one. That collapsed in an earthquake. So, I built a fifth one. That was pillaged by marauding savages, and collapsed in an earthquake . So, I built a sixth one. That was pillaged by marauding savages, burned down, collapsed in an earthquake, and sank into the swamp… So, I built a seventh one. That collapsed in an earthquake . So, I built a eighth one….

[Intermission ]…

But the fourteenth one stayed up, and that’s where you’re going to stay tonight!


Comment from Rich Rostrom
Time: March 31, 2021, 10:10 pm

It’s surprising that the surface flexed so much without rupturing. It does look like a carpet.

I don’t think it was earthquakes that deformed it; it looks more like groundswell.


Comment from Armybrat
Time: March 31, 2021, 10:51 pm

Several years ago hubby and I hired a private driver to run us around Greece for 3 weeks. We were headed to a restaurant one night and had to travel 16 km out of the way because the crew putting in a new road that day scraped up a few tiles that led to a few more tiles and by the end of the day uncovered a complete villa dating back I don’t remember to what century. Our driver was cursing up a storm. We were fascinated!


Comment from OldFert
Time: April 1, 2021, 1:05 am

When I was stationed in Hawaii they’d periodically dig up a burial site or some such while building a road or whatever. Things would then come to a screeching halt until an equivalent of Al Sharpton gave his OK (after proper remuneration, I’m sure).
I always figured that if it was so holy, they would’ve kept track of it and maintained it.

On a related note, years ago my mom related a story about watching a cemetery being moved in Philadelphia. She and her buddies were watching as the steam shovels came in, dug up what was there, and would see bones dropping from the shovels. No holdup for “sacred rituals.”


Comment from durnedyankee
Time: April 1, 2021, 11:09 am

@Armybrat – sorry, rabbit hole, but when I read you hired a driver to run you around I had this vision of a balding portly man in a sweat stained short sleeve shirt and shorts and sandals, with a Yassar Arafat beard, chasing you around an olive grove with a whip cackling “now! run! run! yes! run!”

Might have hade something to do with Turkey being the location for the article.

And let me say, how very surprised I was to read the picture did not relate to a story about poor put upon third world children being forced to work for pennies a day to make reed carpets for rich Americans to buy at Wal-Mart!


Comment from April
Time: April 1, 2021, 2:24 pm

A bit of good news, daughter number 1 got her British passport (I was born in London) so she is off to the motherland to get her law degree…the Empire wants you back….


Comment from catnip
Time: April 2, 2021, 6:47 am

Props for the brief on the jaw-dropping Antakya hotel/museum, Sweasel. The news story is fascinating, but refers to bits of underground artwork not shown in the photos. A link at the end of the article leads to the hotel’s YouTube channel where (in a vid with cover shot of an older woman) the museum’s backstory and treasures are examined in finer detail. What an undertaking its construction was. Seeing all that in person would be nirvana.


Comment from BJM
Time: April 2, 2021, 4:50 pm

The Mail is like an old-time carnival caravan rolling into town. Lots of flim-flams & bogosity but just when we are about to turn away with our purse firmly closed they serve up a genuine bearded lady for our viewing pleasure. They must have interesting editorial meetings.


Comment from catnip
Time: April 3, 2021, 4:06 am

@ BJM,
And props to you for a first-rate analogy. For some it may be the bearded lady; just point me in the direction of the cotton candy.

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