Culture and nature… These are our main foci and what our name, gygaia, represents. From Homer and Hittite archives we know that the word gygaia (we prefer to pronounce it gee-gay-uh with two hard Gs) was associated with ancestors and water birds in the Bronze Age dialects of Anatolia. Homer knew Lake Marmara as gygaia limne: “lake of ancestors” or “lake of water birds.” This is what Gygaia Projects is committed to: the exploration, sustainable use, and preservation of the ancestral cultures and natural environments of the Marmara Lake basin and beyond.