Archaeologists have discovered a large ancient city in Chechnya

A large archaeological site has been discovered in the Chechen Republic, which may turn out to be the lost capital of medieval Alanya — the city of Magas. This was announced on March 30 by Vladimir Malashev, head of the Caucasian Expedition of the Institute of Archaeology (IA) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), at a press conference in Moscow.

"Our Chechen colleague Azamat Akhmarov drew attention to the large size of this monument — its area was about 350 hectares, as well as an unusual set of finds related to it, including coins. In his opinion, Mayrtupskoye is not just a settlement, but a fortified city, which corresponds well to where the city of Magas was located in accordance with the Arab chronicles of that time," TASS quoted him as saying.

The monument was studied in detail during large—scale rescue excavations before the construction of the Novogrozny - Serzhen-Yurt gas pipeline. Archaeologists have established that in the sixth century this place was the site of the necropolis of the Alan culture, on the basis of which later grew a large settlement claiming to be one of the centers of power of the medieval state.

Malashev stressed that the location of the find coincides with the historical descriptions of Arab geographers. According to him, Ibn Rust in the 10th century and Al-Bakri in the 11th century wrote that Magas was three days away from the kingdom of Serir, which was located in the mountainous part of Dagestan, and its central part was on the Khunzakh plateau.

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The expert noted that the evidence of Arab authors generally coincides with the location of the settlement studied. He stressed that against this background, archaeologists plan to continue excavations to test this hypothesis.

Malashev added that there had previously been discussions in the scientific community about the location of Magas at other sites in the North Caucasus, but the version about the identification of the Mayrtup settlement as the capital of the Alans at the moment seems the most reasonable and least controversial.

On March 19, Arkeonews magazine reported the discovery of a 5.5 thousand-year-old settlement on the Bolivian island of Isla del Sol. According to the researchers, the first inhabitants appeared on Lake Titicaca between 3635 and 3381 BC. It was also clarified that the people who lived in the area had the ability to build boats and cross open water.

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