A total of 43 ancient mythological mask carvings have been found by archaeologists in Turkey’s ancient city of Stratonikeia that’s located in the Yatağan district of the southwestern province of Muğla. These 2,200-year-old carvings have been unearthed over the past two years with 33 of them already repaired and cleaned in preparation for the public to eventually view them.

In fact, many items from several different time periods have been unearthed at the 3,000-year-old ancient city that is now a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List. The excavation team, which is led by professor Bilal Söğüt of Pamukkale University, have already uncovered artifacts from the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Anatolian beyliks, Ottoman, and Republican periods.

(Not any of the mask carvings mentioned in this article.)

The excavation team has been working on several different structures in the city that includes a 2,200-year-old ancient theater where the mask carvings have been discovered. “We have been working at the ancient theater for two years. We found 33 face molds during our excavations here. Today, we unearthed 10 more. Hopefully, we will be able to find all the masks at the theater in their own places and arrange them in their original order. That will be very pleasant for us,” Söğüt stated.

He went on to describe how in ancient times, the masks would have been all around the theater’s stage. “When people came here in ancient times, they were impressed by the splendor and magnificence of the theater even before entering it. We have been slowly uncovering its richness and splendor. This [is] also the value ancient people gave to culture, art and architecture,” he explained.

He added that in addition to the characters depicted in the plays, the masks also represented ancient gods/goddesses and even animals. Pictures of the mask carvings can be seen here.

An aerial view from the 2,200-year-old theater in the ancient city of Stratonikeia, Muğla, southwestern Turkey, Nov. 24, 2020.

(AA PHOTO)

(Not any of the mask carvings mentioned in this article.)

While these masks were carved in stones, it wasn’t the only interesting mask discovery in western Turkey this year. A couple of months ago I wrote an article on a 2,400-year-old Terracotta mask depicting the Greek god Dionysus that was unearthed in the ancient city of Daskyleion that’s located in the Bandirma district of the Balikesir province. According to the archaeologist who led the excavation team, it was “possibly a votive mask” which means that it could have been used to express a wish or vow. (The article can be read in full here.)

There have certainly been some interesting discoveries unearthed in Turkey this year with possibly more to come.

Google “World’s oldest temple” (go ahead, we’ll wait) and the #1 answer is the famous Göbekli Tepe (Göbeklitepe) in southern Turkey, believed to have been built 11,000–12,000 years ago as a place to worship the dog star, Sirius. Loaded with T-shaped carved stone pillars, it predates Stonehenge by 6,000 years and puts Utah’s sole monolith to shame. Unfortunately for fans of the Göbekli Tepe, it may soon be knocked down to #2 with the announcement that the Karahan Tepe or Karahantepe in Turkey’s southeastern Şanlıurfa province contains hundreds of statues and artifacts that initially appear to predate Göbekli Tepe. Can Göbekli Tepe fans demand a recount?

“Life in Göbeklitepe is not only limited to a period of ‘T’-shaped stones. It reflects a much longer process, there is a settlement of 700 to 800 years. It is certain that Karahantepe is somewhere in this period. It may cover a longer period of time or it may begin before. The excavations here will reveal all these, but at least we can say that this process coincides with a significant time period, a contemporary period. This means 11,500 years before today.”

Professor Necmi Karul of the Prehistory Department at the İstanbul University is the leader of the “Göbeklitepe Culture and Karahantepe Excavations” project and explains in Hurriyet Daily News that while the site was initially discovered in 1997, surveys did not start until 2018 and excavations didn’t begin until September 2019. The surveys found at least 250 T-shaped Neolithic-era obelisks were found. The obelisks appeared to be similar to those at Göbekli Tepe and the excavations are proving it. (Photos here.)

“The excavation program continues in Karahantepe in an intensive and rapid manner. There are more years of work, but we will have reached an older excavation center. This is 12 thousand years old, the other will be much older. It will probably become a priority place than Göbeklitepe. It will be our new focus of attention.”

Speaking at the 10th International Resort Tourism Congress this week, Turkish Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy excitedly delivered the news, saying the discovery “will make a sound in the world!”. That would certainly be the case in both of the minister’s departments. Göbekli Tepe has been regarded as the world’s oldest temple since its discovery and its monoliths and artifacts continue to be intensely studied — as will those at Karahantepe. The fame and publicity has resulted in Göbekli Tepe becoming a major tourist attraction for Turkey, and, while Karahantepe might take some of that away, together the should increase the total number of visitors and tourist dollars for the country.

“This year we have found very important finds highlighting the human symbolism. We discovered sculptures and new buildings. The statue head is quite interesting. The statue head, 50 cm in diameter, is carved into the bedrock. Again, we found structures carved into the bedrock around it. “

One of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe.

(Wikipedia Creative Commons (also feature image))

Karul points out that, while both Göbekli Tepe and Karahan Tepe are loaded with T-shaped columns, the statues are different, with Göbekli Tepe having more animal representations while Karahan Tepe has more humans. That could mean the two sites, while similar, were separated by more than their 35 km (21.7 mile) distance. So far, the tools found at Karahan Tepe indicate it was a hunter and gatherer community.

Get your algorithm read, Google. There’s a new oldest temple in town.

During World War II the skies over Europe were not stranger to battle. Here there were frequent engagements between fighter lanes, and the sounds of machine gun fire and explosions were as common a background noise as the singing of birds or the chirping of crickets. The violence became a fact of life in many places, a common occurrence, yet in the summer of 1941 a very strange series of events would play out in the skies over Le Mans, France that was far from the ordinary. At the time a French soldier by the name of Daniel Ledger was at Le Mans when his attention, as well as that of the villagers, was drawn to an unusual sight in the sky in an area above what was then a German occupied airfield in nearby town of Raineries. And so would begin a weird odyssey involving UFOs, crashed spaceships, and a mysterious alien woman.

On that summer day they could see what looked like a dense, aluminum-colored cloud that was shaped somewhat “like the handle of a frying pan” and the whole of it ringed with a mist that orbited the more solid looking darkened interior. This odd cloud seemed to be more than just a cloud, as it had a certain weight and solidity to it, and it was also moving across the sky faster than the other clouds. It was indeed a strange sight, but what made it even stranger still was that there seemed to be German fighter planes circling the mass, looking like flies at that distance but the droning of their engines still audible and unmistakable. From what they could see, the German planes seemed to be attacking the cloud, but as they did another, larger cloud descended to hover over the scene, this one described as luminous and matching the speed of the one below it. Upon the arrival of this cloud, the German planes that came close to it were seen to “fall down like leaves” for several seconds before taking to the air again.

To Ledger it seemed like their engines were cutting out to send them into a temporary free fall, and he suspected this was being done as a defense by the clouds. This would go on for nearly a full hour before the planes veered away and the clouds disappeared into the distance. Ledger would claim that he looked through newspaper reports in the following days and found not a single mention of anything that could have explained what he had seen. Puzzled, he tried to put the bizarre experience out of his head, but little did he know that this was to pale in comparison to another experience he would have a few years later.

In July of 1943, Ledger had been conscripted by the Germans to work at a labor camp in the coastal town of Gdynia, Poland, and one day he requested permission to visit the town of Exelgroud, which was granted. The only way for him to go at the time was on foot, but it wasn’t far, and so he headed out but soon found that the walk was taking longer than he expected. Ledger apparently decided to take a shortcut that took him over an area of sand dunes along the Baltic beach. As he made his way across the sand, he noticed something up ahead that was quite unusual. Half buried in the sand was what appeared to be some large grey metallic object, seemingly lodged deep into a dune as if it had fallen from the sky to crash there. Curious, Ledger approached the object and that was when things became even stranger than they already were.

As he drew closer, Ledger was met with the sight of a woman with long blonde hair and dressed in some sort of tight-fitting black or dark-brown jumpsuit with a belt, who appeared to be trying to manually dig the weird object out of the sand. At this point, Ledger was convinced that this must be a German pilot who had gone down in some sort of experimental aircraft and was in trouble, and this made him slightly hesitant to go any closer. He contemplated turning back, but as he did so the strange woman turned to face him, as if somehow aware of his presence. Her features were completely human, even pretty, slightly Asian looking despite her flowing blonde hair, and a look of relief spread across her face. She gestured for him to come over and help her, which he warily did, still not sure of who this person was.

When he reached the object, she gestured that she wanted him to dig with her, and he soon found that the craft was not as firmly embedded in the sand as he had thought. They were able to dig it mostly free in short order, and Ledger noticed that it was composed of a completely smooth metal that had no noticeable joints or seams. As they dug she talked to him, and when she finally spoke it was not in German or Polish, but rather a language he was unfamiliar with, but which sounded vaguely Russian. Although he could not understand what she was saying she seemed to understand him, although he was not sure why he had this impression. When they finished removing the last of the sand she repeated some unintelligible words which he took to be thanks, and then touched a button in her belt. When she did, a door on the metal object slid open, even though there were no seams to show a door was there, and she gestured to the sky and tapped her chest, then motioned for Ledger to back away from the craft. He could understand that she meant to take off, and so he did as he was told, still a bit confused as to who this person was and what was going on.

The woman then entered the object and the door slid closed behind her, blending seamlessly into the exterior like it had never even been there at all. Ledger claimed that before the door closed he could briefly see that the interior was devoid of any instrumentation panels, and that the woman was assuming a position on all fours, as if she were about to enter a “motorbike competition.” The craft then began to rise into the air in a shower of loose sand, glowing slightly as it did. Ledger took a few more steps away, and was astonished that the aircraft made no noise at all. The craft silently hovered there for a moment before suddenly shooting straight up into the sky at phenomenal speed and vanishing to leave him standing there dumfounded at what he had just seen.

It is important to note that even after all of this, Ledger was convinced that this had been some form of experimental aircraft and that he had met its very human pilot, but in later years he was not so sure. When UFO reports started to emerge more frequently and the United States and Soviet Union began their space programs, Ledger remembered the German fighters circling that strange cloud and his weird encounter with the woman and her ship on the dunes and he wondered if perhaps these had been brushes with something beyond this world and even if they were connected somehow. Being as this is a rather obscure case with little in the way of corroborating evidence, it is hard to know what to make of it. Who was this mysterious woman and where was she from? Was she ever even real at all? What connection, if any, does it all have to Ledger’s previous claimed experience? We will probably never know, and it remains another historical oddity confined to the forgotten mists of history.

The two biggest planets in our Solar System will provide us with a beautiful sky treat this Christmas season. While the conjunction will happen from December 16^th to the 25^th, Jupiter and Saturn will be the closest they’ve been to each other in almost 800 years on December 21^st.

Jupiter and Saturn to form 'double planet' for first time ...

This event will be visible worldwide with the best views from the equator. The two planets will appear in the western sky close to the horizon around the time that the sun sets. Those who live in the north, however, will have a much shorter time frame to see the conjunction before the planets disappear below the horizon. Patrick Hartigan, who is an astronomer from Rice University of Houston, Texas, noted, “Viewing that would be manageable if the weather cooperates and you have an unobstructed view to the southwest.”

Since this summer, Jupiter and Saturn have been moving closer to each other, and on the winter solstice (December 21^st) they will appear less than a full moon’s width apart from one another.

Hartigan explained what will happen during this upcoming sky show, “On the evening of closest approach on Dec 21 they will look like a double planet, separated by only 1/5th the diameter of the full moon,” adding, “For most telescope viewers, each planet and several of their largest moons will be visible in the same field of view that evening.”

The two planets won’t appear next to each other at this close of a range until 60 years from now on March 15, 2080 when they will be visible higher up in the sky and for a longer length of time. Then it won’t happen again until after the year 2400.

Hartigan went on to explain just how unique this sky show will be, “Alignments between these two planets are rather rare, occurring once every 20 years or so.” “But this conjunction is exceptionally rare because of how close the planets will appear to one another.” “You’d have to go all the way back to just before dawn on March 4, 1226, to see a closer alignment between these objects visible in the night sky.”

Since this event will not happen again for another 60 years, you may want to head outside on December 21^st to see this pretty holiday show.