Archaeologists working at the UNESCO World Heritage site of Sardis in western Turkey have unearthed the remains of a monumental Lydian palace dating to the 8th century BC, a real breakthrough in our understanding of ancient Anatolian civilization. The discovery, led by Professor Nicholas Cahill of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, required excavating nearly eight meters below ground to reach the palace ruins, buried beneath successive layers of Persian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine occupation.
The massive stone walls, rising more than six meters in height and measuring up to two meters in thickness, represent some of the earliest monumental architecture north of the Mediterranean. Alongside the palace, the excavation team discovered luxury residential structures, sophisticated terraced architecture, approximately 30 bronze arrowheads, human skeletal remains, and nine silver coins – among the world’s earliest known examples of standardized currency.
This remarkable find transforms archaeological understanding of the Lydian civilization, pushing back the timeline of their urban development by at least a century and revealing a sophisticated society that operated independently of Greek cultural influence during the Iron Age.