6 Открытий на Дне АРАЛА, Которые Переписывают Историю Средней Азии

Over the past sixty years, the Aral Sea has lost more than ninety percent of its volume—and, as it receded, it began to give up what it once held beneath the waves. In Muynak, a ship graveyard remains on the former seabed: rusty seiners a hundred kilometers from the water. Worked stones, brickwork, and baked clay bearing human fingerprints have been found in the sand there—proof that the sea had once invaded inhabited land. These finds could not be dated; they are kept in a box in the local history museum. An elderly resident of Muynak recounted that a city with towers stood here before the sea—her words were considered legend until the Kerderi mausoleum and the fourteenth-century settlement of Aral-Asar were discovered on the Aral Seabed. Nearby stand the fortresses of ancient Khorezm—Ayazkala and Toprakkala—built in a verdant land that has become desert. And the last to open was Vozrozhdeniya Island: the closed military town of Kantubek, a testing ground for anthrax. The sea receded, and the island ceased to be an island.