Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Odysseus, who voyaged across the wine-dark seas of the Mediterranean in Homer’s epic, may have had some astonishingly ancient forerunners. A decade ago, when excavators claimed to have found stone tools on the Greek island of Crete dating back at least 130,000 years, other archaeologists were stunned—and skeptical. But since then, at that site and others, researchers have quietly built up a convincing case for Stone Age seafarers—and for the even more remarkable possibility that they were Neandertals, the extinct cousins of modern humans. The finds strongly suggest that the urge to go to sea, and the cognitive and...

Greece in teetering on the brink of ruin - and it is hard not to feel sympathy for the pensioners crying in the street and the mothers facing empty supermarket shelves. Yet those reading a new book may find themselves feeling a little less compassionate towards the Greeks. It reveals an eye-popping catalogue of benefits scams and tax avoidance schemes that have robbed the public purse. James Angelos' The Full Catastrophe: Travels among the New Greek Ruins lays bare the corruption which filtered through all levels of society - from the islanders who pretended to be blind, to the families...

About 25 years ago, I started diving in the clear blue waters of Zakynthos. Many times I passed through the water seeing small broken pieces of ceramics and I asked myself where they were from. I thought that maybe there was something buried in the sand. I believed that there was definitely something ancient around the area that deserved more investigation. For many years I didn’t find any other clues to prove this. My love for the sea made me buy an underwater camera to start taking photographs of my diving excursions. It was then that the secret was...

ATHENS (Reuters) - Nine British women were facing prostitution charges after being arrested at the weekend for taking part in an oral sex competition in the Greek holiday island of Zakynthos, police said on Monday. Six British and six Greek men, including two bar owners, were also charged in the incident, which took place at Laganas beach in the south of the Ionian island, which lies off the west coast of mainland Greece, police said. The women, who came to the popular resort on holiday, had been paid to take part in the competition, which was video recorded and was...