A Roman Circus That Held Horse-Drawn Chariot Races Was Discovered In Northern Spain
In northern Spain, a large Roman venue known as a circus that held horse-drawn chariot races was discovered by researchers.
During aerial investigations at Iruña-Veleia, an ancient Roman city located in the Álava province of the Basque Autonomous Community, the circus’s outline was detected.
The circus is about 920 feet long by 235 feet wide. It is estimated that the venue could accommodate around 5,000 spectators.
The project was led by the Provincial County of Álava and the Basque regional government. The Spanish software technology startup Arkikus documented the circus during a survey of an area that covered more than 620 acres.
The area was mapped using a remote sensing method known as light detection and ranging (LiDAR).
Drones captured images of the area. Researchers also examined historical and modern aerial photography of the site.
LiDAR involves the firing of laser pulses at the ground to produce three-dimensional models of a landscape.
The technique can map the topography while also revealing features that are not visible to the human eye.
This is the third known Roman circus to be discovered in the northern half of the Iberian Peninsula. The other two were found in the ancient settlements of Tarraco and Calagurris.
Fernando Cortés – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
Circuses were large open-air venues that were mainly used for chariot racing, although they sometimes were used for other purposes.
Chariot racing was the most popular form of public entertainment and was an essential part of many religious festivals.
After the fall of Rome, chariot racing began to experience a significant decline in the Western Roman Empire. The last known race was held by the Ostrogothic king Totila in A.D. 549.
In addition to the circus at Iruña-Veleia, several other buildings and infrastructure were observed beneath the site’s surface.
There was evidence of streets, residential neighborhoods, public squares, structures related to water supply/sanitation, possible religious buildings, and more.
According to Akirkus, these findings highlight the importance of Iruña-Veleia as a transit center for people traveling along the Roman road that connected what is now Astorga, Spain, and Bordeaux, France. At its peak, Iruña-Veleia had a population of around 10,000 inhabitants.
It served as a major urban hub in present-day Basque territory. The Basque Autonomous Community is home to the Basque people, a European ethnic group that refers to themselves as Euskaldunak.
They speak a distinct language that is known locally as Euskara, which predates the Romance languages of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.
Linguists consider Euskara as a “language isolate,” meaning that it is not derived from any other known language family.
Basque is thought to be the last remaining descendant of the “Paleo-European” languages, which predates the Indo-European languages brought to the continent by migrants from the Eurasian Steppe during the Bronze Age.
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