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Geological testing was done at the site in 2005, for the purpose of placing pillars in solid ground so that the stability of the roof would not be an issue in the event of an earthquake. What they found while using high resolution travel time tomography, a method of getting images from under the surface of the earth using waves of energy, were underground cavities. These were both man made and natural. The man made gaps in the earth were filled with rocks, ceramics, and other items of interest to archeologists. Before drilling the new shafts and setting the pillars...

Although ancient ruins in Akrotiri were discovered in 1860 by workers quarrying volcanic rock for the Suez Canal, large scale excavations there didn't begin until 1967. An archeologist by the name of Spyridon Marinatos suspected there were extensive ruins beneath the farmlands at Akrotiri and wrote about his theory in 1936. Due to the outbreak of World War II and the Greek Civil War, he had to postpone his explorations. Earlier digs in the area had been destroyed by plowing of the fields and there were no written records of where they had taken place or what the findings were....

While approximately forty buildings have been uncovered at Akrotiri, there are six that have been given more attention than the others. The architecture and function of each building is different. The largest building uncovered so far, Xeste 4, is three stories high and believed to be a public building because of its dimensions. The staircase had fragments of frescoes on either side depicting males ascending in a procession. The second largest building, Xeste 3, was at least two stories high, with fourteen rooms on each floor. The rooms were decorated with paintings and some had more than one door. One...

With the archeological site at Akrotiri closed, and no firm date set for it to reopen, many visitors to the island of Santorini have been disappointed not to see what is inside the Akrotiri enclosure. Although it doesn't replace seeing the amazing number of buildings that have been uncovered, around 40 so far, the museums on the island hold a fair amount of artifacts and photographs of wall paintings. If archeology is at the top of your list of reasons for visiting Santorini, here are some helpful phone numbers to call and confirm hours and days they are open. The...

The excavations at the archeological site at Akrotiri in Santorini are ongoing, so there is scaffolding everywhere and supports in place to stabilize walls, windows and doorways that might otherwise collapse. You need to use your imagination to put yourself back in prehistoric times, but with the help of guides or signs posted along the walkways, you can get a fair idea of what life was like. An excavated toilet, pictured in the slide show, has been left in view for the amusement of the tourists and to demonstrate how advanced the plumbing and drainage system was. The inhabitants had...

A staple complaint of the climate sceptic, that it’s impossible to determine the impact of historical volcanic eruptions on the climate, is a step closer to being spiked, courtesy of work at the University of Copenhagen. The university’s Matthew Johnson, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry, has published work conducted with the Tokyo Institute of Technology in which he uses the isotopes captured in old sulphur to determine the scale of eruptions. As explained in the university’s announcement, the work is designed to resolve the often-conflicting dates attached to recorded eruptions. Dating is difficult from ancient records, since...

The ancient Minoan city of Akrotiri was destroyed by a massive eruption over 3,000 years ago. Will it happen again soon to the excavated remains and the modern town? Scientists uncover some possible signs..... Now, a new survey suggests that a chamber of molten rock beneath Santorini's volcano has expanded 10-20 million cubic metres – up to 15 times the size of London's Olympic Stadium – between January 2011 and April 2012. The growth of this 'balloon' of magma has seen the surface of the island rise 8-14 centimetres during this period, a team led by Oxford University scientists has...

In this Timewatch special, historian Bettany Hughes unravels one of the most intriguing mysteries of all time. She presents a series of geological, archaeological and historical clues to show that the legend of Atlantis was inspired by a real historical event -- the greatest natural disaster of the ancient world. She is tracing the origins of the Atlantis myth and presenting evidence that the Thera eruption inspired Plato's account of the mystical land. 2,400 years ago Greek philosopher Plato wrote of an ancient island civilization of unparalleled wealth and splendor, which was struck by earthquakes and floods and was swallowed...

A catastrophic volcanic eruption spewing huge clouds of ash about 3,600 years ago was behind the burial of the Nebra sky disk, one of the most spectacular archaeological finds in recent years, according to scientists at Mainz and Halle-Wittenberg universities in Germany. The 3,600-year-old disk, discovered in 1999 near the town of Nebra in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, is the oldest known representation of the night sky. It is thought by some to have been used as an astronomical clock to determine when to add a thirteenth month synchronising the lunar calendar with the solar year. The disk...

Article by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev professor published in Science magazineBEER-SHEVA, ISRAEL June 17, 2010 -- In a just published article in Science magazine (June 18, 2010), Prof. Hendrik J. Bruins of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev presents novel implications related to new developments in the radiocarbon dating of Pharaonic Egypt. The article reports that, for the first time, it is possible to relate the Minoan Santorini eruption with Egyptian Historical Chronology solely on the basis of radiocarbon dates. Thus, it appears that the eruption preceded the 18th Dynasty and occurred during the Hyksos Period. Moreover, conventional association of...

An inscribed stele erected at Thebes by Ahmose, the first Pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, documents a destructive storm accompanied by flooding during his reign. Fragments of the stele were found in the 3rd Pylon of the temple of Karnak at Thebes between 1947 and 1951 by the French Mission. A restoration of the stele and translation of the text was published by Claude Vandersleyen (1967). In the following year (1968), Vandersleyen added two more fragments, one from the top of the inscription and a small piece from line 10 of the restored text, which had been recovered by Egyptian...

The massive eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean Sea more than 3,000 years ago produced killer waves that raced across hundreds of miles of the Eastern Mediterranean to inundate the area that is now Israel and probably other coastal sites, a team of scientists has found. The team, writing in the October issue of Geology, said the new evidence suggested that giant tsunamis from the catastrophic eruption hit “coastal sites across the Eastern Mediterranean littoral.” Tsunamis are giant waves that can crash into shore, rearrange the seabed, inundate vast areas of land and carry terrestrial material out to...

The site was found by accident when the Suez Canal was being constructed in 1860. Workers quarrying Santorini's volcanic ash discovered the ruins, but serious excavations at the site didn't begin until 1967. An unfortunate collapse of the roof in 2005, which killed a British tourist, caused the site to be closed. It's scheduled to be reopened sometime after 2010. Greek bureaucracy has brought the repairs of the building to a halt, which has caused Santorini's tourist trade to suffer. Akrotiri is referred to by some as the "Minoan Pompeii" because of the similarities of the destruction by volcano and...

The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest. The new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added. The islands that make up the small circular archipelago of Santorini, roughly 120 miles (200 km) southeast of Greece, are what remain of what once was a single island, before one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human antiquity shattered it in the Bronze Age...

How Old Tree Rings And Ancient Wood Are Helping Rewrite History ScienceDaily (Oct. 27, 2007) — Cornell archaeologists are rewriting history with the help of tree rings from 900-year-old trees, wood found on ancient buildings and through analysis of the isotopes (especially radiocarbon dating) and chemistry they can find in that wood.Sturt Manning talks to visitors during a demonstration of the tree-ring laboratory following his presentation during Trustee/Council Weekend. At the lecture, Manning explained how students and lab staff members precisely dated a wooden support beam from McGraw Hall to 1870. (Credit: Jason Koski/Cornell University Photography)" By collecting thousands of...

Greece is the word for volcanoesA local professor is studying the ancient eruption of Thera By Helen Altonn haltonn@starbulletin.com Floyd McCoy, Windward Community College professor of geology and oceanography, hopes during a year and a half in Greece to resolve the "hugely controversial" question of when the Thera volcano erupted. He will investigate the Mediterranean's largest volcanic eruption in history as a Fulbright scholar. McCoy has spent the past 20 years studying geological evidence of the Late Bronze Age eruption of Thera volcano that led to the end of the Minoan culture on the island of Santorini. Geophysicists say the...

Published online: 28 February 2006; | doi:10.1038/news060227-3 Were ancient Minoans centuries ahead of their time? Unprecedented mathematical knowledge found in Bronze Age wall paintings. Philip Ball Did the Minoans understand the Archimedes' spiral more than 1,000 years before him? A geometrical figure commonly attributed to Archimedes in 300 BC has been identified in Minoan wall paintings dated to over 1,000 years earlier. The mathematical features of the paintings suggest that the Minoans of the Late Bronze Age, around 1650 BC, had a much more advanced working knowledge of geometry than has previously been recognized, says computer scientist Constantin Papaodysseus of...

A provocative $4-million documentary by Toronto filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici claims to have found archeological evidence verifying the story of the biblical Exodus from Egypt, 3,500 years ago. Religious Jews consider the biblical account incontrovertible — the foundation story of the creation of the nation of Israel. Indeed, they celebrated the Exodus Wednesday night and last night with the annual Passover recitation of the Haggadah. But among scholars, the question of if and when Moses led an estimated two million Israelite slaves out of pharaonic Egypt, miraculously crossed the Red Sea ahead of the pursuing Egyptian army and received the Ten...

Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed Media Contact: Todd McLeish, 401-874-7892 Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed; likely had significant impact on civilization KINGSTON, R.I. – August 23, 2006 – An international team of scientists has found that the second largest volcanic eruption in human history, the massive Bronze Age eruption of Thera in Greece, was much larger and more widespread than previously believed. During research expeditions in April and June, the scientists from the University of Rhode Island and the Hellenic Center for Marine Research found deposits of volcanic pumice and ash 10 to 80 meters thick...

University of Rhode Island professor Robert Ballard... was slated to... meet up with the crew of the... 185-foot-long research vessel Endeavor... Ballard, notably known for his 1985 discovery of the Titanic, will be heading up a team of scientists from URI's Graduate School of Oceanography, the Institute for Exploration, and the Institute of Oceanography of the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in Athens. Scientific operations for the expedition began on Apr. 26 and will continue through June 18... The first leg of the expedition will be to the Greek island of Thera, also known as Santorini, to study the sea...