Am deschis grupe noi Abheda Yoga Tradițională în
📍 București, 📍 Iași (din 7 oct) și 🌐 ONLINE!
Înscrierile sunt posibile doar o perioadă limitată!
Te invităm pe canalele noastre:
📲 Telegram –
https://t.me/yogaromania
📲 WhatsApp –
https://chat.whatsapp.com/ChjOPg8m93KANaGJ42DuBt
Dacă spiritualitatea, bunătatea și transformarea fac parte din căutarea ta,
atunci 💠 hai în comunitatea Abheda! 💠
<>This statement sounded absolutely incredible a year ago, but today, the hypothesis is taking shape! Latest results of “aerial archaeology” show that, in fact, the area of expansion and habitation of the former capital of the Dacians far exceeds the sacred area and the area of the Roman castrum, the only vestiges dug there by our historians in the last half century. If the theories are confirmed, we could discover in Grădiștea de Munte a true ancient metropolis, with nothing less than the most beautiful cities in Greece and Rome at the beginning of the millennium!
“Last minute” news about the ancient Dacians
Recent research, carried out with the latest technologies of aerial photography and scanning of the ground, commissioned by the British public television BBC, for the production of an extensive documentary about the Roman Empire, brings to light unprecedented information, which puts in a completely different light what we knew about the Dacians and their capital, Sarmizegetusa. The interpretations made by the specialists consulted by “Formula AS”, based on the photographs made available to the Museum of History of Transylvania by the filmmakers of the documentary, indicate that Sarmizegetusa was not a simple fortress, as it was believed, but a metropolis in all the power of the word, arranged on terraces cut on the top of the mountain, according to all the norms of the urban planning of the time, by the most skilled craftsmen of the ancient era, royally paid by Decebalus and his ancestors. In addition, the highlighting of unknown Roman enclosures, most likely belonging to the last period of Sarmizegetusa’s habitation, indicates the existence of a much larger castrum than was known until now.
<>Treasure hunters
When they started pre-documenting the filming of the film “The Lost Empire of Rome”, the English presenter Dan Snow, from the BBC, and the archaeology expert Sarah Parcak, from Alabama State University in Alabama, had no idea that they were going to radically change the theories of Romanian specialists regarding Sarmizegetusa Regia, the ancient capital of the Dacian Kingdom. The two based their television project on Sarah’s previous spectacular results in Egypt. With the help of images captured by satellites and processed by special computer programs (an imported technology, belonging to military espionage actions), Sarah had discovered more than 1,200 unknown archaeological sites, from long-lost temples to new pyramids! As real “treasure hunters”, as experienced archaeologists call those who strictly pursue the discovery of spectacular objectives, and not the systematic revelation of the past, the two presenters of the documentary produced by the BBC hoped to find something like this during the filming of “The Lost Empire”. The first target was, predictably, Rome, where they turned their attention to the ancient port that served the capital of the empire. There, Sarah and Dan activated the lenses of the satellites in search of the famous lighthouse of Portus, one of the great wonders of the Roman world, which had not yet been discovered. As, however, due to the numerous modern constructions that cover the site of the old port near Rome, the research dragged on, the two decided to try their luck in ancient Dacia, the kingdom conquered by Emperor Trajan in 106 AD. In the Orăștiei Mountains, Dan and Sarah ran into a problem that they had not had either in Egypt or in Rome, the extremely dense vegetation that covers the vestiges around the Dacian Sarmizegetusa made it practically impossible to use satellite images. Instead of ruins, the satellites could only see the sea of raw green that covers the sacred mountains of the Dacians.
<>The simulation of the two Roman castrums, from Sarmizegetusa Regia, in the vision of the BBC documentary
Impressive results…
In order to penetrate, however, the mysteries of the Dacian Sarmizegetusa, the producers of the BBC documentary turned to the Romanian researcher Ioana Oltean, from Exeter University, in the UK. “The BBC contacted me as a specialist in the archaeology of Dacia. They knew about my book “Dacia: Landscape, Colonization, Romanisation”, published in 2007. By chance, I was also a specialist in aerial archaeology and, from this position, I was able to offer them a more complex consultancy. The BBC wanted the documentary to obtain unprecedented archaeological information, which would be useful for ground research. I, who had made aerial archaeological reconnaissance flights in Romania, knew that at Sarmizegetusa Regia the archaeological traces are covered by forests, therefore undetectable from the satellite. That’s why we suggested to the BBC to use the only technology capable of ‘seeing’ through the crown of trees, namely LIDAR, a technology that uses laser beams projected from a special plane,” says Ioana Oltean.
Basically, the LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) system penetrates the vegetation, no matter how dense it is. The technology had been successfully used by archaeologists who discovered the Mayan city of Caracol. Four days were enough for the technology to give archaeologists a much more detailed map than what they had obtained after a quarter of a century of ground research! Now, in the case of Dacia, the budget made available by the BBC allowed the rental of a plane with LIDAR technology, which flew over Grădiștea de Munte.
The novelty of the discovery at Grădiștea de Munte is also confirmed by Ioana Oltean. “The images that were sent to me gave enough certainty to identify at least one large circumvallation, hitherto unknown in the area of the fortification on Dealul Grădiștei, and which is now known to have been built by the Roman army of occupation. Of course, there are other new data about the site in Dealul Grădiștei. Right now, I am processing the original LIDAR data, which was recently provided to me by the BBC…”, explained the Romanian researcher from Exeter University. New surprises could arise from one moment to another in connection with the Dacian Sarmizegetusa!
<>The first Roman camp, the large one, discovered by the BBC, compared to the new castrum, which Romanian archaeologists were aware of
An unfortunate ending
The presentation of the results from Grădiștea de Munte in the documentary “The Lost Empire of Rome”, broadcast in our country in the spring of this year, is, unfortunately, disappointing. Superficial in their description of the Dacians, whom they categorize as “barbarians”, without any other nuance or explanation, and concerned only with the emphasis on the civilizing force of the Roman Empire, Dan Snow and Sarah Parcak are content to note the presence of a Roman castrum of much larger dimensions than the one known before the results of LIDAR, a castrum on which, presented in a straight-plan simulation, completely contrasting with the peaks and differences in level of the place, he populates it with Roman barracks, explaining that Trajan left numerous troops in Sarmizegetusa in order to be able to impose peace in the area… But even if Dan Snow’s film deceived the expectations of the Romanian public, the results revealed by the LIDAR scan – an important direction taken by the BBC project – are now within the reach of specialists in Romania and can be used to truly understand the realities of pre- and post-Roman Dacian Sarmizegetusa.
Dacian urbanism surpasses any imagination
The information made available by the images obtained by the BBC, plus a series of other indisputable arguments, to which he had access over the years, during his research, helped Dr. Alexandru Diaconescu, archaeologist of the Roman era and lecturer at the Faculty of History of the “Babeș-Bolyai” University of Cluj-Napoca, to structure a courageous theory related to the capital of the Dacian kingdom. “Our vision until now was that Grădiștea de Munte would have been a fortress like all the others, a fortress in which a few dozen people lived, the civil settlement stretching on the secondary plateaus and at the foot of the hill. Or, Grădiștea is something else! Sarmizegetusa Dacică was, in fact, a city, which is not too easy for us to believe, after reading that between the walls there were only a few sanctuaries and that’s about it. A large quantity of iron was found there, in two or three workshop-buildings, which quantitatively exceeds all the iron in so-called barbarian Europe. You have, in Sarmizegetusa, the largest industrial production in Europe, after Greece and Rome! Recently, Simion Ştefan, in his book dedicated to the wars of Domitian and Trajan with the Dacians, written in French, showed that at Sarmizegetusa Regia there was a very large habitation, which he places approximately on the entire summit of the Grădiștei hill. In addition, he intuits that the enclosure of the Dacian fortress must have been much larger, but, without additional data, the plans proposed by Simion Stefan are inaccurate… But now, here come these photos paid for by the English from the BBC: and the LIDAR images show that, apart from a well-known Roman castrum, you can still see the traces of a castrum, as well as numerous other constructions. The details of a Dacian urbanism that surpasses any imagination can be distinguished”, says Dr. Alexandru Diaconescu, enthusiastically, while showing me the photos captured by the plane equipped with LIDAR technology.
In 102, when, after the first war with King Decebalus, Emperor Trajan imposed the conditions for the conclusion of peace, the first of them was the expulsion from Dacia of architects, engineers and military instructors, Alexandru Diaconescu tells me. “That hurt Traian the most! There were military instructors who had helped the Dacians fight well against the Romans and there were engineers and architects that the Dacian kings used to keep up to date with everything that the architecture and fortifications of the time meant.” “Having a monopoly on precious metals, Decebalus was so rich that he did not even need his own currency. What should he do with a coin on which to write “Decebalus per Scorilo”? The Dacians copied the Roman currency to perfection and, thus, practically, they paid in “hard currency” these foreign specialists, of whom point 1 of the peace treaty of 102 speaks. When they returned home, the specialists hired by the Dacian kings went with good money “and without smell”, earned across the Danube. Not to mention that the Dacian coins were made of quality metals, of silver better than the one from Rome…”, Alexandru Diaconescu continues his reasoning. The Dacians, he says, had close contacts with the Pontic fortresses and the Greek world for centuries and made full use of experts and specialists from friendly fortresses. “The Dacian elites were no strangers to the principles of classical urbanism. The recently discovered Getic city, dating from the third century BC, from Sboryanovo, in Bulgaria, is the possible predecessor of the Dacian Sarmizegetusa. The entire site, including the famous necropolis of Sveștari, occupies almost 100 hectares and is located immediately south of Ruse”, argues Professor Diaconescu.
<>”Everything has an incredible scope compared to what we knew before”
The first archaeological researches of 1922-1924, from Grădiștea de Munte, by Professor D.M. Teodorescu
“Aerial photographs open a new perspective in understanding the Dacian world, because we are dealing with a kind of Machu Pichu in Peru. We can talk not only about constructions on terraces with an extensive sewerage system and about walls with optical correction, for which Greek signs were used. On the photos you can see buildings beyond the area known so far. Everything has an incredible scope compared to what we knew previously,” says Alexandru Diaconescu.
“The new photos show that there are two Roman castra and a Dacian enclosure, much larger, which includes a rectangular acropolis and an agora, where the sanctuaries are. Then, very spectacular is the fact that the great processional road continues far west, for hundreds of meters. To the west you can see, in fact, several monumental stone buildings on both sides of the road, which I knew nothing about before”, remarks Professor Diaconescu, studying the photos of the BBC. “It is an unusual road, because it is of an impressive width, compared to normal Roman roads, which were very narrow, enough for a cart to pass, only the main ones reaching 12 meters wide. Plus the Dacian road was paved with blocks of stone so fine, that it was as if they were clay blocks cut with a sword. It can only be a ritual journey, because only at religious ceremonies do you go with two or three carts next to each other. To the southeast, from the great processional road, a road starts, perpendicularly, probably parallel to the one that led to one of the gates of the Dacian fortress. These paths, which cross at right angles, are specific to Hellenistic urbanism. In fact, both the south-eastern gate of the Dacian enclosure and the hexagonal curtain tower were built, according to archaeological research, from blocks shaped according to Hellenistic municipal techniques. This enclosure should be followed by archaeologists step by step, as it does not seem to have had a regular trajectory.”
If the LIDAR scan was able to virtually eliminate the forest that covers the ancient remains, in reality, archaeologists will have to actually do so, in order to be able to excavate ancient Sarmizegetusa. “It is obvious that the first measure to be taken is the deforestation of the forest that invaded the ruins of the Dacian capital,” said in unison several specialists consulted by “Formula AS”, who believe that, in this case, historical arguments must take precedence over any other type of arguments, environmental, for example.
“Formula AS” has brought together the most important information, revealed over time by the excavations at Grădiștea de Munte, with the results of the recent lidar scan to demonstrate as clearly as possible the true size of the Dacian Sarmizegetusa, about which too little was known before the BBC documentary
Sarmizegetusa must have had a part surrounded by a wall, with public buildings and luxury residences, the “upper city”, and a much wider one, the “lower city”, says Alexandru Diaconescu. A good example of such a city, built on terraces supported by walls, is Pergamon, in Asia Minor. “Upstairs were the royal residence and temples, then, on the following terraces, there are public squares and religious edifices, and below, civil housing begins,” Professor Diaconescu imagines the beautiful capital of the Dacians. Just a year ago, before the BBC’s documentary, such a dream would have seemed pure madness…
Source: article by Ciprian Rus taken from:
SARMIZEGETUSA REGIA – Noutăţi spectaculoase despre fosta capitală a dacilor