The ancient city of Kane has been found in the Aegean Sea

Archaeologists in Turkey have discovered the site of an island city that saw a major battle between Spartans and Athenians in ancient times.

The city of Kane is mentioned in several ancient texts as the site of a major incident during the Peloponnesian War in the 5th century BC, but has never before been precisely located.

Researchers led by the German Archaeology Institute examined underground rock in the area to determine that the peninsula was at one point an island. Ceramic fragments dating from the era helped to confirm the discovery of one of the three Arginus islands mentioned by ancient scholars.

“It was not clear that these lands were actually the Arginus islands that we were looking for until our research,” Felix Pirson of the Germany Archaeology Institute told Today's Zaman.

Güler Ateş, an archeologist from Celal Bayar University, told Doğan News Agency that Kane was an important harbour in the ancient world:

It is understood that this place was like a way station among important routes such as Lesbos and Adramytteion [today Edremit] in the north and Elaia [Zeytindağ], the main harbour of the ancient city of Pergamon, in the south.

The Battle of Arginusae in 404 BC occurred near the end of the 27-year-long Peloponnesian War between the city states. While Athens won the battle, the war ultimately marked the demise of the "golden age" of ancient Greece and the rise of Sparta as a major power.

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