Alexander’s first triumph: Turkish scholars rediscover the lost battlefield of the Granicus

For much than two millennia, the nonstop crushed connected which Alexander the Great archetypal tested his destiny remained unknown. The Battle of the Granicus, fought successful 334 B.C., was the young Greek Macedonian king’s opening strike against the mighty Persian Empire—a clash that acceptable him connected the way to legend. While past chroniclers near accounts of the fighting, the battlefield itself seemed to vanish into time.

Now, a team of Turkish scholars judge they person rediscovered it. Led by Professor Revhan Körpe of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University, researchers traced the footsteps of Alexander’s service crossed Asia Minor, combining geomorphological surveys with a caller speechmaking of classical sources. Their work points to the Biga Plain, adjacent the modern metropolis of Biga and the people of the Granicus River, arsenic the true ιστοσελίδα of the encounter.

The scenery itself provided the key. Ancient writers described a marsh and a elevation that played a relation successful the battle. Looking eastbound of the marshes, Körpe’s team identified a elevation where section farmers had agelong unearthed weapons buried beside quality remains—echoes of the Macedonian dormant whom Alexander, according to tradition, interred with their arms. In 2024, the find of an unmarked sedate atop that elevation lent further weight to the identification.

Another decisive hint emerged with the unearthing of Hermaion, an past metropolis mentioned successful the chronicles arsenic Alexander’s past halt earlier the battle. Mapping Hermaion’s presumption allowed the scholars to reconstruct the Macedonian route: from Ozbek village done Umurbey and Lapseki, then south into the plain where the armies met.

It was here, connected the banks of the Granicus, that Alexander, not yet 22 years old, hurled himself into combat. Riding astatine the caput of his cavalry, helium astir mislaid his beingness earlier being pulled to information by his companions. The Persians were broken, their Greek mercenaries scattered, and the way into Asia Minor laic open.

The victory was much than tactical—it was symbolic. In seizing the field, Alexander announced himself not simply arsenic the heir to Macedon but arsenic a conqueror destined to topple Persia and transportation Hellenic powerfulness to the edges of the known world. It was from this moment, that his epithet “the Great” began to take root.

In the 13 years that followed, Alexander would unite the Greek city-states, shatter Darius’ empire, and carve retired a dominion stretching from the Mediterranean to India. Yet it was connected the plain by the Granicus, with his archetypal triumph successful Asia, that the people of world past began to turn.