Yanartaş
Yanartaş, proposed as the ancient Mount Chimaera, is the name of a geographical feature near Olympos valley and national park in Antalya Province in southwestern Turkey, at a distance of about eighty kilometers to the southwest from the city of Antalya, near the town of Cirali.
It is characterized by a permanent fire caused by methane emissions and the area is located on a track popular with hikers and trekkers on the Lycian Way.
Called in Turkish Yanartaş (flaming rock), the spot consists of some two dozen vents in the ground, grouped in two patches on the hillside above the Temple of Hephaistos about 3 km north of the village of Çıralı, near ancient Olympos, in Lycia. The vents emit methane thought to be of metamorphic origin. In ancient times sailors could navigate by the flames, but today they are more often used to brew tea, the flames being of little use for navigation nowadays.
The site was identified as the ancient Mount Chimaera by Sir Francis Beaufort in 1811, and described by T.A.B.Spratt in his Travels in Lycia, Milyas, and the Cibyratis, in company with the late Rev. E. T. Daniell. The discussion on the connection between the myth and the exact location of Chimera was started by Forbiger in 1844, and the George E. Bean was of the opinion that the name was allochtonous and could have been transferred here from its original location further west, as cited by Strabo, owing to the presence of the same phenomenon and the fires.
Yanartaş is also the title of a 1970 novel by the Turkish novelist Mehmet Seyda, although not associated with the locality in question.
See also
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Books
- A.M. Celal Sengör (2003). The Large Wavelength Deformations in the Lithosphere: Materials for a History of the Evolution of Thought from the Earliest Times to Plate Techtonics p. 310 Endnotes ISBN 0813711967. Geological Society of America.
- George E. Bean (1978). Lycian Turkey ISBN 0510032052. Ernest Benn, London.