When the excavation reached what had been the bottom of the sea, the archeologists announced that they could finally cede part of the site to the engineers, after one last survey of the seabed—just a formality, really, to make sure they hadn’t missed anything. That’s when they found the remains of a Neolithic dwelling, dating from 8 ka BP. It was previously unknown that anyone had lived on the site of the old city before 3.3 ka BP. The excavators, attempting to avoid traces of Istanbul’s human history, had ended up finding an extra 5000 years of it.

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