Nimara Mağarası

This guide to Nimara Cave near Marmaris in Muğla follows two worn sandstone statues of women, noticed by workers in 1998, and the scramble of treasure diggers and souvenir hunters that damaged the site before it was finally protected. It traces the 2007 excavation the municipality rushed to run, and what came up from the cave floor, beads, tools, figurines, and coins, along with a radiocarbon reading that upended what Herodotus had claimed about this coast. Many researchers link the two statues to Leto, mother of Apollo and Artemis in Greek myth.