In 2017, Russian builders discovered the head of a 2,500-year-old terracotta statue of a Greek god during an underwater construction operation off the Crimean Peninsula.
Sergei Olkhovskiy, head of the underwater archaeology unit of the Russian Academy of Sciences, has commented that the discovery of the terracotta is a unique artifact of the Northern Black Sea Region and that archaeologists have never encountered anything like it before.
The sculpture is supposedly from Anatolia (Asia Minor) and dates back to the 5th century B.C. However, more will be confirmed after it is carefully examined by specialists in ancient Greek art and additional research is conducted.
“This finding is unique on the northern coast of the Black Sea (…) we believe this head was made in Asia Minor around the 5th Century B.C,” says Olkhovskiy.