In recent years, the geothermal waters have been pumped up to nearby hotels for use in their hot baths.

As a result, the mud at the bottom of the lake is made of alternating black and white layers (or varves) representing different seasons of the year.

[3] Sediment cores taken from Nar lake have been dated by counting individual layers back thousands of years.

Laboratory analysis of these sediment cores has enabled the history of climate and human activities to be reconstructed in great detail.

For example, pollen analysis has shown how the Arab invasions of central Anatolia during the 8th and 9th centuries destroyed Cappadocia’s late antique rural economy based on tree crops and cereal cultivation, the so-called Beyşehir Occupation phase.