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...in the northwestern part of the settlement, where in the previous excavation period very strong retaining walls had been discovered at a height of almost two meters, two building interiors (X1, X2), one containing a bench, and an exterior courtyard also with a bench. The layers of lava and ash from the eruption of the Santorini volcano covering this part of the settlement remains contributed considerably to their being perfectly preserved (fig. 2). The above areas were thoroughly excavated thus clarifying matters of their form, nature and chronology, with the presence of both Middle Cycladic layers and Early Cycladic phases...

Ongoing excavations have revealed a historical latrina – a toilet or an even simpler facility used as a toilet within a sanitation system – at a historical theater in the ancient city of Smyrna, located within the borders of the western city of Izmir. The latrina is thought to have been used by the artists in the theater. The theater and the commode date back to around the second century B.C. and were used until the fifth century A.D., said Akın Ersoy, an archaeologist at Izmir's Katip Çelebi University and head of the excavation team.Touting "unexpected finds" during the excavations,...

Greece's first underwater museum opens ancient world to dive tourists As Greece opens up its vital tourism industry, the site offers an example of a new and more sustainable source of revenue. As Greece opens up its vital tourism industry, the site offers an example of a new and more sustainable source of revenue.PHOTO: AFP PUBLISHED15 MIN AGO FACEBOOKWHATSAPP ALONNISOS, GREECE (AFP) - Emerging from the crystal-clear turquoise waters of the Aegean Sea, Mr Hans-Juergen Fercher has just returned from his fourth dive to where mounds of 2,500-year-old wine pots mark the site of an ancient shipwreck - and Greece's...

A large fossilized tree 20-million-years-old, preserved intact with its branches and roots, was found on the Greek island of Lesvos.It is considered an extremely rare find, as it is the first time since 1995 when excavations began in the area of Western Lesvos by the Museum of Natural History of the Petrified Forest of Lesvos, where a fossilized tree with its branches has been located.The tree is about 19 meters long, and is said to have been preserved due to the thick layer of volcanic ash that covered it after it fell.“It is a unique find,” Professor Nikos Zouros said,...

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit the Aegean Sea off Greece and Turkey on Friday, according to the United States Geological Survey. At least 4 people were killed in the quake, according to Turkey’s health minister. The city of Izmir in Turkey has been particularly badly hit with reports of at least 20 building destroyed, cars being crushed and people in the streets following the quake. The earthquake has also caused damage on the Greek island of Samos in the Aegean sea.

A powerful earthquake has struck off Turkey's Aegean coast, north of the Greek island of Samos, officials said. The 7.0 magnitude tremor, about 17km (11 miles) off the coast of western Izmir province, was felt as far away as Athens and Istanbul, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. There was no word on casualties but images from the Turkish city of Izmir showed buildings that had collapsed. An earthquake that struck Izmir in 1999 killed about 17,000 people. Reports said Friday's quake was also felt on the Greek island of Crete. Video on social media showed people searching through the...

Tension is running high between Greece and Turkey. The cause? Turkish Chief of the General Staff Gen. Hulusi Akar paid a visit to Imia, a pair of two small, uninhabited Greek islets in the Aegean Sea, on January 29. He was accompanied by the commanders of the Turkish land, naval and air forces.Imia – which Turkey calls “Kardak” – was a subject of yet another crisis in 1996 that brought Greece and Turkey to the brink of war. Although armed conflict was ultimately averted, Turkey still claims that the islands are Turkish, even though the islands in the Aegean are...

Opalescent pools full of carbon dioxide have been found at the site of the second biggest volcanic eruption recorded in human history. The eruption in the Aegean Sea off the coast of Santorini wiped out the Minoan civilisation living along the coast in 1600 BC. The newly discovered pools were found forming at a depth of 250m. They is a series of interconnected white pools that have high concentrations of CO2 and scientists say they could shed light on future volcanic eruptions and answer questions about deep sea carbon storage. An international team of scientists used sophisticated underwater exploration vehicles...

Underground, the morphology and the organization of the mining infrastructure allow to distinguish several phases of activity. The archaeological data gathered and observed during the latest phase of the 2015 campaign: pottery, stone hammers made of a volcano-sedimentary rock quarry, point towards a high dating for the earliest phase of mining activities in the area (Late Neolithic / Early Helladic: around 3200 BC). If future research confirms this hypothesis, the chronological framework of mining in the region of Attica and the Aegean world would be profoundly modified. The Classical phase is by far the most perceptible; omnipresent, it is remarkable...

Greece is ready to open its first underwater museum beginning in August. The park, located off the coast of Alonissos Island in the western Aegean, will show-off the stunning marine life and a historic wreck off of Pertistera Islet. According to the news from ekathimerini, the site will be open to tours from licensed guides from August 3rd until October 2nd. The part will let amateur divers explore the 5th century BC wreck which carried a cargo of hundreds of amphoras of wine. The site is blessed with a wealth of archaeological treasures and incredibly rich sea life resulting from...

But the team stresses they do not want to build a replica of the original bronze structure of a warrior standing over the entrance of the ancient city’s harbour. Instead, they want to construct a 150-metre tall “reimagining” of the wonder, based on the ambitions and vision of the original 2200-year-old monument. They want to crowdsource its funding through the internet. It will still be a colossal statue. It will still be a lighthouse. But it will we sheathed in a bronze-coloured skin that doubles as solar panels. The team says they aim to “put back on the map the...

Egypt has announced an anti-Turkey alliance that includes Greece, Cyprus, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and France to confront Turkish moves in Libya and the Mediterranean. The announcement was made during a virtual meeting with the foreign ministers of these countries on May 11. In a joint statement issued shortly after the meeting, the five-party alliance said it will focus on confronting the Turkish moves in the territorial waters in Cyprus, where Turkey has been carrying out “illegal” excavations in the Mediterranean under Cyprus sovereignty. The alliance also condemned Turkey’s escalated violations of Greek airspace.  The European Union condemned May 16...

Five major ancient shipwrecks that carried amphorae and an anchor pole pointing to a large sea vessel are among the amazing finds found by archaeologists during underwater searches at the bottom of Levitha, a small island in the Aegean Sea, between Amorgos and Leros... The shipwreck at Knidos had a trove including amphorae, dating back to the same period, while three more shipwrecks with cargoes of Cone or pseudo-Cone amphorae were found (2nd and 1st centuries BC) and the 2nd century AD), a shipwreck with amphorae cargo from the North Aegean of the 1st century BC, a shipwreck with cargo...

"The longest chronology in the world stretches back 12,000 years. But in the Mediterranean, the problem is that we don't have a full, continuous record going back to the time of Thera," Pearson said. "We have recorded the last 2,000 years very well, but then there's a gap. We have tree rings from earlier periods, but we don't know exactly which dates the rings correspond to. This is what's called a 'floating chronology.'" Filling this gap could help pin down the Thera eruption date and paint a climatic backdrop for the various civilizations that rose and fell during the Bronze...

Scientists have unearthed new evidence in Greece proving that the island of Naxos was inhabited by Neanderthals and earlier humans at least 200,000 years ago, tens of thousands of years earlier than previously believed. The findings, published today in the journal Science Advances, are based on years of excavations and challenge current thinking about human movement in the region -- long thought to have been inaccessible and uninhabitable to anyone but modern humans. The new evidence is leading researchers to reconsider the routes our early ancestors took as they moved out of Africa into Europe and demonstrates their ability to...

FULL TITLE: Controversial footprint discovery suggests human-like creatures may have roamed Crete nearly 6m years ago The human foot is distinctive. Our five toes lack claws, we normally present the sole of our foot flat to the ground, and our first and second toes are longer than the smaller ones. In comparison to our fellow primates, our big toes are in line with the long axis of the foot – they don't stick out to one side. In fact, some would argue that one of the defining characteristics of being part of the human clade is the shape of our...

The remains of an ancient Greek cargo ship that sank more than 2,300 years ago have been uncovered with a deep-sea robot, archaeologists announced today. The ship was carrying hundreds of ceramic jars of wine and olive oil and went down off Chios and the Oinoussai islands in the eastern Aegean Sea sometime around 350 B.C. Archeologists speculate that a fire or rough weather may have sunk the ship. The wreckage was found submerged beneath 200 feet (60 meters) of water. The researchers hope that the shipwreck will provide clues about the trade network that existed between the ancient Greek...

Modern science has held that islands such as Cypress and Crete were first inhabited by seafaring humans approximately 9,000 years ago by agriculturists from the late Neolithic period. Simmons writes that research over the past 20 years has cast doubt on that assumption however and suggests that it might be time to rewrite the history books. He cites evidence such as pieces of obsidian found in a cave in mainland Greece that were found to have come from Melos, an island in the Aegean Sea and were dated at 11,000 years ago as well as artifacts from recent digs on...

IT LOOKS like Neanderthals may have beaten modern humans to the seas. Growing evidence suggests our extinct cousins criss-crossed the Mediterranean in boats from 100,000 years ago - though not everyone is convinced they weren't just good swimmers. Neanderthals lived around the Mediterranean from 300,000 years ago. Their distinctive "Mousterian" stone tools are found on the Greek mainland and, intriguingly, have also been found on the Greek islands of Lefkada, Kefalonia and Zakynthos. That could be explained in two ways: either the islands weren't islands at the time, or our distant cousins crossed the water somehow. Now, George Ferentinos of...

Archaeologists on the island of Crete have discovered what may be evidence of one of the world's first sea voyages by human ancestors, the Greek Culture Ministry said Monday A ministry statement said experts from Greece and the U.S. have found rough axes and other tools thought to be between 130,000 and 700,000 years old close to shelters on the island's south coast. Crete has been separated from the mainland for about five million years, so whoever made the tools must have traveled there by sea (a distance of at least 40 miles). That would upset the current view that...