Video reconstruction of the tsunami
Posted on 04/22/2007 5:53:44 AM PDT by yankeedame
Last Updated: Friday, 20 April 2007, 08:05 GMT 09:05 UK
By Harvey Lilley
BBC Timewatch
The legend of Atlantis, the country that disappeared
under the sea, may be more than just a myth. Research on
the Greek island of Crete suggests Europe's earliest
civilisation was destroyed by a giant tsunami.
Video reconstruction of the tsunami
Until about 3,500 years ago, a spectacular ancient civilisation was flourishing in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The ancient Minoans were building palaces, paved streets and sewers, while most Europeans were still living in primitive huts.
But around 1500BC the people who spawned the myths of the Minotaur and the Labyrinth abruptly disappeared. Now the mystery of their cataclysmic end may finally have been solved.
The wave would have been as powerful as the one that devastated the coastlines of Thailand and Sri Lanka on Boxing day 2004 leading to the loss of over 250,000 lives
A group of scientists have uncovered new evidence that the island of Crete was hit by a massive tsunami at the same time that Minoan culture disappeared.
"The geo-archaeological deposits contain a number of distinct tsunami signatures," says Dutch-born geologist Professor Hendrik Bruins of the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.
"Minoan building material, pottery and cups along with food residue such as isolated animal bones were mixed up with rounded beach pebbles and sea shells and microscopic marine fauna.
The Santorini eruption may
have sparked the tsunami
"The latter can only have been scooped up from the sea-bed by one mechanism - a powerful tsunami, dumping all these materials together in a destructive swoop," says Professor Bruins.
The deposits are up to seven metres above sea level, well above the normal reach of storm waves.
"An event of ferocious force hit the coast of Crete and this wasn't just a Mediterranean storm," says Professor Bruins.
Big wave
The Minoans were sailors and traders. Most of their towns were along the coast, making them especially vulnerable to the effects of a tsunami.
One of their largest settlements was at Palaikastro on the eastern edge of the island, one of the sites where Canadian archaeologist Sandy MacGillivray has been excavating for 25 years.
Here, he has found other tell-tale signs such as buildings where the walls facing the sea are missing but side walls which could have survived a giant wave are left intact.
"All of a sudden a lot of the deposits began making sense to us," says MacGillivary.
"Even though the town of Palaikastro is a port it stretched hundreds of metres into the hinterland and is, in places, at least 15 metres above sea level. This was a big wave."
How it might have looked as
the wave approached the town
But if this evidence is so clear why has it not been discovered before now?
Tsunami expert Costas Synolakis, from the University of Southern California, says that the study of ancient tsunamis is in its infancy and people have not, until now, really known what to look for.
Many scientists are still of the view that these waves only blasted material away and did not leave much behind in the way of deposits.
But observation of the Asian tsunami of 2004 changed all that.
"If you remember the video footage," says Costas, "some of it showed tonnes of debris being carried along by the wave and much of it was deposited inland."
Volcanic eruption
Costas Synolakis has come to the conclusion that the wave would have been as powerful as the one that devastated the coastlines of Thailand and Sri Lanka on Boxing day 2004 leading to the loss of over 250,000 lives.
After decades studying the Minoans, MacGillivray is struck by the scale of the destruction.
"The Minoans are so confident in their navy that they're living in unprotected cities all along the coastline. Now, you go to Bande Aceh [in Indonesia] and you find that the mortality rate is 80%. If we're looking at a similar mortality rate, that's the end of the Minoans."
But what caused the tsunami? The scientists have obtained radiocarbon dates for the deposits that show the tsunami could have hit the coast at exactly the same time as an eruption of the Santorini volcano, 70 km north of Crete, in the middle of the second millennium BC.
The Minoans were Europe's
first great civilisation.
Recent scientific work has established that the Santorini eruption was up to 10 times more powerful than the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883. It caused massive climatic disruption and the blast was heard over 3000 miles away.
Costas Synolakis thinks that the collapse of Santorini's giant volcanic cone into the sea during the eruption was the mechanism that generated a wave large enough to destroy the Minoan coastal towns.
It is not clear if the tsunami could have reached inland to the Minoan capital at Knossos, but the fallout from the volcano would have carried other consequences - massive ash falls and crop failure. With their ports, trading fleet and navy destroyed, the Minoans would never have fully recovered.
The myth of Atlantis, the city state that was lost beneath the sea, was first mentioned by Plato over 2000 years ago.
It has had a hold on the popular imagination for centuries.
Perhaps we now have an explanation of its origin - a folk memory of a real ancient civilisation swallowed by the sea.
Interesting thought.
Eden In The East(Professor Stephen Oppenheimer)
Editorial Reviews
In an exhaustively researched and creatively argued reassessment of mankind's origins, British physician Oppenheimer, an expert in tropical pediatrics, contends that the now-submerged area of Southeast Asia was the cradle of ancient civilization.
From time to time, scholars from various disciplines have argued for the existence of a vastly old ``founder civilization.'' Among the most famous was Charles Hapgood, who based his theory of a lost seafaring civilization on his analysis of the famous 16th-century ``Piri Re'is'' maps of the Antarctic land mass.
In this tradition, Oppenheimer blends evidence from geology, genetics, linguistics, archaeology, and anthropology to argue persuasively that such a civilization existed on a submerged land mass in Southeast Asia, which geologists call the Sunda shelf. Pointing to geological evidence for the submersion of the shelf by abrupt rises in the sea level about 8,000 years ago, Oppenheimer contends that the coastal cultures of Southeast Asia were drowned by a great flood, reflected in flood mythologies scattered from the ancient Middle East (such as the biblical story of Noah) to Australia and the Americas.
According to the author, tantalizing archaeological evidence exists of settlements under a ``silt curtain'' left by the sea floods in drowned coastal regions from Southeast Asia to the Middle East, while linguistic markers indicate that languages spread from Southeast Asia to Australia and the Pacific.
The shared flood story is one striking example of similar Eurasian myths according to the author; the ancient Middle East and Asia share other myth typologies, conspicuously including creation and Cain and Abel myths, which point to common origins in a progenitor culture.
Absorbing, meticulously researched, limpidly written, and authoritative: should be regarded as a groundbreaking study of the remote past of Southeast Asia, and of civilization itself. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Description A book that completetly changes the established and conventional view of prehistory by relocating the Lost Eden - the world's 1st civilisation - to SouthEast Asia. At the end of the Ice Age, SouthEast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India, which included Indochina, Malaysia, Indonesia and Borneo.
The South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Java sea, which were all dry, formed the connecting parts of the continent. Geologically, this half sunken continent is the Shunda shelf or Sundaland.
In the Eden in the East Stephen Oppenheimer puts forward the astonishing argument that here in southeast Asia - rather than in Mesopotamia where it is usually placed - was the lost civilisation that fertilised the Great cultures of the Middle East 6 thousand years ago. He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, from creation stories, myths and sagas and from linguistics and DNA analysis, to argue that this founder civilisation was destroyed by a catastrophic flood, caused by a rapid rise in the sea level at the end of the last ice age.
Me too. I would choose South America 2nd today.
> Interesting thought.
About the kangaroos and the kiwis, animals only found on islands/continents in the South Pacific (which is a very very big place)...
I’m a Christian and I do believe in the Bible. A part of that requires me to believe in a universal flood that covers the entire world to a depth of some 29,000 feet (the height of Mt Everest) and it then requires me to believe that all the animals in the world were somehow on a big wooden boat.
I’ll swallow all of that on Faith. Dropping off the Kangaroos and Kiwis and tuataras in the South Pacific would have been a really big logistical exercise. Floating accidentally down to NZ and Australia would have taken a fair wee while. And dropping deadly poisonous snakes and spiders off only in OZ and not in NZ. And dropping off Weta bugs only in NZ and not in OZ. Then then finding its way under no power (presumably by prevailing currents?) back to Mt Ararat...?
It is at this point that Faith and Reason might part company. I happily exist in both worlds because I’ve decided it is perfectly OK to be a human contradiction, and that there is no requirement to be consistent or to have everything balance out and have debits equal credits.
Who says everything must make sense, everything must be explained? And who says that Reason is the best way to do that? I don’t.
Reason says there are no ghosts. I have seen a ghost. Nobody can persuade me otherwise. Reason does not support the paranormal: I believe in the Paranormal. And I believe in Reason.
The Indians believed in the Great Spirit: I have a Sioux Indian blood brother and I believe in the Great Spirit and have felt its presence in the wilds.
The Maori believe in similar paranormals, like Tu the Warrior Spirit. I have been in the bush in NZ and I feel that there is a Presence. And nothing will persuade me that Tu is not present when Maori Warriors are doing the Haka as if they mean it.
None of this has anything to do with Reason.
The Spiritual world has a very legitimate place in our lives. To some extent it can co-exist with the world of Science, Reason and Logic. Neither is more important than the other. Neither trumps the other. One day they may be co-explained and reconciled.
But I don’t need for that to happen to happily participate in both worlds.
As the antient Scottish doggerel goes:
“On Earth and Sky and Sea
Straynge Thynges There Be...”
Cheers
*DieHard*
I am also thinking Yucatan Peninsula and Cayman Island area.
Layers of mystery: Archaeologists look to the earth for Minoan fate
Worcester Telegram & Gazette | Sunday, October 28, 2007 | Judy Powell
Posted on 11/03/2007 11:04:25 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1920708/posts
“Even when, during the respective Thera Conferences, individual scientists had pointed out that the magnitude and significance of the Thera eruption must be estimated as less than previously thought, the conferences acted to strengthen the original hypothesis. The individual experts believed that the arguments advanced by their colleagues were sound, and that the facts of a natural catastrophe were not in doubt... All three factors reflect a fantasy world rather than cool detachment, which is why it so difficult to refute the theory with rational arguments.” — Eberhard Zangger, “The Future of the Past”, pp 49-50.
(this April topic appears to be the oldest FR thread regarding Sandi MacGillivray; thanks again for sending the Discovery story link, I’m nearly caught up with my back mail)
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I am a bit late to the thread, but if readers want to understand what happened to Atlantis (and the Earth), then check this out:
http://faculty.nps.edu/mjjaye/docs/SOI%20Supplemental%20Material%20Resolving%20the%20Problem%20of%20Atlantis%20Jaye.pdf
More soon - there’s a related presentation at the upcoming Geological Society of America in Vancouver.
Geologists made a big mistake about 200 years ago.... Fixing bad science is a hard thing to do, but new data certainly helps.
Heck of a coincidence, with the timing. I take that as a sign of an invisible hand.
Some religious people, on occasion, 'jump-me' about science articles that I post. I don't know of any that I've posted that does anything but add support to the Christian bible.
It’s not just here. I wrote that paper for a Theology Class my Freshman year of college. Got a D. “religious heresy”. Proudest D of my life <^..^>
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