A diver stumbled upon round columns while diving off the coast of the town of Dikili in western Turkey in 2021. It took archaeologists more than a year to establish the origins of the artefacts.

At the time, the 39-year-old engineer, who works in the US, handed his images of the artefacts to an excavation team working in the ancient city of Pergamon.
It took researchers a year to determine that the columns spotted by Orhun were part of a harbour belonging to the ancient city of Atarneus, which dates back to approximately the fourth century BC.
Atarneus was the seat of government of the "tyrant" Hermias, a friend of the famous ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. The city was deserted in the first century BC, possibly after an outbreak of an unknown epidemic.