Free Republic

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...

During the Late Bronze Age, the Aegean volcanic island of Thera erupted violently, spreading pumice and ash across the eastern Mediterranean and triggering frosts as far away as what is now California. The Theran town of Akrotiri was completely buried. Tsunamis up to 12 meters high crashed onto the shores of Crete, 110 kilometers to the south, and the cataclysm may ultimately have sped the demise of Crete's famed Minoan civilization. For nearly 30 years, archaeologists have fought over when the eruption took place. Those who rely on dates from pottery styles and Egyptian inscriptions put the event at roughly...

WASHINGTON - Compared to the well-studied world of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the civilizations that flourished in the eastern Mediterranean just before Homer’s time are still cloaked in mystery. Even the basic chronology of the region during this time has been heatedly debated. Now, a resolution has finally emerged -- initiated, quite literally, by an olive branch.Scientists have discovered the remains of a single olive tree, buried alive during a massive volcanic eruption during the Late Bronze Age. A study that dates this tree, plus another study that dates a series of objects from before, during and after the eruption,...

April 28, 2006Cornell study of ancient volcano, seeds and tree rings, suggests rewriting Late Bronze Age Mediterranean history By Alex Kwan Separated in history by 100 years, the seafaring Minoans of Crete and the mercantile Canaanites of northern Egypt and the Levant (a large area of the Middle East) at the eastern end of the Mediterranean were never considered trading partners at the start of the Late Bronze Age. Until now. Trenchmaster Vronwy Hankey and foreman Antonis Zidianakis excavate storage jars from the Minoan settlement Myrtos-Pyrgos. The jars were analyzed in the Cornell study using radiocarbon analyses. Cultural links between...

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 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...

Laser Rangefinder: A team of Princeton computer scientists has developed an automated system for reconstructing an excavated fresco, mosaic or similar archaeological object. Collaborating closely with archaeologists in Greece, the team has created a system that employs a combination of powerful computer algorithms and a processing system mirroring the procedures traditionally followed at excavation sites. Here, a fragment is placed on a turntable and a laser rangefinder measures its visible surface from various viewpoints. Credit: Frank WojciechowskiExamining Fresco Fragments In Santorini: Tim Weyrich, a postdoctoral teaching fellow in computer science at Princeton, examines fresco fragments in Santorini. Weyrich is...

Three year after part of a protective roof collapsed killing a British tourist, the ancient Minoan site of Akrotiri on Santorini remains closed. Excavations have halted and the reconstruction of its roof is stuck in the wheels of bureaucracy. Tourism businesses on the island say they are losing money and prestige as a result. In September 2005, part of a new 1,000m2 roof designed to cover and protect the excavations collapsed without warning, killing Richard Bennion and injuring many others. The site was immediately closed for investigation but inexplicably has remained so for the last 34 months. "I can't say...

Learn something new every day entry: this image and accompanying article (click the source link above) told me about Nea Kameni, which is in the Santorini lagoon and which had volcanic activity in 1950. I never knew the name of the island and that it was recently active until yesterday. Click for full-size. Here's a view taken from Santorini. And this image is just to put everything into proper perspective.

The effects of the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004 are only too well known: It knocked the hell out of Aceh Province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, leveling buildings, scattering palm trees, and wiping out entire villages. It killed more than 160,000 people in Aceh alone and displaced millions more. Similar scenes of destruction were repeated along the coasts of Southeast Asia, India, and as far west as Africa. The magnitude of the disaster shocked the world. What the world did not know was that the 2004 tsunami—seemingly so unprecedented in scale—would yield specific clues to one of...

While archaeologists have theorized that a volcanic explosion on the island of Thera, 70 miles north of Crete, was responsible for the Minoan downfall, it wasn't until recently that evidence of a massive tsunami, brought on by the eruption, was linked to the mystery... During a recent dig, a team working under Montreal-born scientist Sandy MacGillivray found volcanic ash and strange gravel deposits that looked as if "they had been washed into the site by a violent flood," Mr. Hadingham said. While the ash's composition was identical to that found on the island of Thera, there was no river or...

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...