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Rémy Bossu, Secretary-General of the European-Mediterranean Siesmological Centre, said “days, or perhaps, weeks” would be needed to evaluate the unusual tremors but said that the series of quakes typically occur in the build-up to a larger tremor. A state of emergency has been declared in the idyllic Greek island of Santorini amid a series of near-constant tremors in recent days, which have almost emptied the famous Greek tourist haven of visitors and residents. The largest tremor so far was recorded on Wednesday evening, when a quake with a magnitude of 5.2 coursed through the island. It was the first to...

Santorini has been hit by a powerful, shallow 5.3 magnitude earthquake, which is the strongest to strike the Greek island during recent seismic activity in the area. The tremors were felt in Athens on Monday evening and measured a focal depth of 17km (10.6 miles). ... The tourist hotspot has been rocked by seismic activity since January and more than 12,800 quakes have been detected by the University of Athens' Seismological Laboratory. ... Landslides have occurred in many parts of Santorini due to the frequency and intensity of the tremors and experts have not ruled out a major earthquake. Seismologists...

A state of emergency has been declared on the Greek island of Santorini after days of consecutive earthquakes. It comes after a magnitude 5.2 tremor was recorded at 21:09 local time (19:09 GMT) on Wednesday between the Greek islands of Amorgos and Santorini, making it the strongest in recent days. It is estimated to have occurred at a depth of 5km (3.1 miles). The decree will be in effect until 3 March to "address the emergency needs and manage the consequences", officials said. More than 11,000 people have already left Santorini, with around 7,000 departing by ferry and 4,000 by...

A series of earthquakes near the Greek island of Santorini have led authorities to shut down schools, dispatch rescue teams with sniffer dogs and send instructions to residents including a request to drain their swimming pools. he strongest earthquake recorded was magnitude 4.6 at 3:55 p.m. Sunday, at a depth of 14 kilometers (9 miles), the Athens Geodynamic Institute said. A few tremors of over magnitude 4 and dozens of magnitude 3 have followed. There were no reports of damage or casualties. Earthquake experts and officials from the Ministry of Climate Crisis and Civil Protection and the fire service have...

Did the eruption of Thera cause the Ten Plagues of Egypt, such as the transformation of the Nile into blood?The eruption of the Minoan island of Thera, or Santorini, has popularly been linked to the legend of Atlantis. However, many researchers also attempt to connect it to another famous story: the Ten Plagues. The Bible tells the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Is it possible that the eruption of Thera really could have resulted in these famous Ten Plagues? How the eruption of Thera supposedly explains the Ten Plagues According to advocates of...

...Last spring, Manning realized he could solve the problem by looking elsewhere -- hundreds of kilometers away from Thera -- to regions of the Aegean Sea that experienced the tsunami effects caused by the eruption. Manning incorporated dates obtained for these episodes into his model to test for, and discount, the volcanic carbon dioxide caveat. On Thera itself, he also spotted the importance of a short but clearly observed gap in time between the abandonment of the town at Akrotiri and the huge eruption, and he incorporated this previously overlooked constraint into the modeling....

Lower sea levels over the last 360,000 years are linked with more eruptions When sea level drops far below the present-day level, the island volcano Santorini in Greece gets ready to rumble. A comparison of the activity of the volcano, which is now partially collapsed, with sea levels over the last 360,000 years reveals that when the sea level dips more than 40 meters below the present-day level, it triggers a fit of eruptions. During times of higher sea level, the volcano is quiet, researchers report online August 2 in Nature Geoscience. Other volcanoes around the globe are probably similarly...

Archaeologists have been excavating the city of Berenike on Egypt's Red Sea coast on and off since 1994. Berenike was founded between 275 and 260 BC, but was temporarily abandoned sometime between 220 and 200 BC, before being repopulated for many centuries. After Egypt was annexed by the Roman Empire in 30 BC, Berenike became the empire’s southernmost port....the well dried up between 220 and 200 BC, and sand was blown into it by the wind. This sand is preserved in the well, and contains two bronze coins dating from the decades before 199 BC. Elsewhere in the fortress, there...

The remains of the young man were found at a dig site known as Çeşme-Bağlararası. It sits along a shoreline on Çeşme Bay in western Turkey. The dig site has been yielding Late Bronze Age artifacts for several years but it was only recently that the digging uncovered evidence of a tsunami—layers of ash and debris that were prevented from being washed back into the sea by a retaining wall. In addition to the remains of the young man, the researchers also found the remains of a dog. The evidence also showed that the area had been struck by several...

...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...

A 12-METRE monolith, hacked out of limestone by stone-age humans some nine thousand years ago, has been found at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The enormous stone totem, now split in two and sitting in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily, was hewed from a rocky outcrop some 300m away when the Mediterranean Sea was still a dry basin. It’s now under 40m of water. The new study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, says the area was submerged about 9350 years ago (give or take 200 years) when the last Ice Age retreated. Before that time the...

“There is a likely chance of tsunami waves reaching the shores of Israel,” says Dr. Beverly Goodman of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa following an encompassing geo-archaeological study at the port of Caesarea. “Tsunami events in the Mediterranean do occur less frequently than in the Pacific Ocean, but our findings reveal a moderate rate of recurrence,” she says. Dr. Goodman, an expert geo-archaeologist, exposed geological evidence of this by chance. Her original intentions in Caesarea were to assist in research at the ancient port and at offshore shipwrecks. “We expected to find...

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...

Tsunami or melting glaciers: What caused ancient Atlit to sink? By Ofri Ilani At the bottom of the sea, some 300 meters west of the Atlit fortress, lies one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of the Mediterranean basin. About 20 years ago, archaeologists discovered a complex of ancient buildings and ancient graves with dozens of skeletons at the underwater site of Atlit-Yam. The team of marine archaeologists that excavated the site, headed by Dr. Ehud Galili of the Israel Antiquities Authority, came to the consclusion that an ancient settlement once existed there, but sank beneath the surface of the sea...

It's a terrifying vision: A violent eruption of Italy's Mount Etna triggers a massive collapse of one flank of the volcano, sending 35 cubic kilometers of debris--the equivalent of 10,000 Cheops pyramids--hurtling at 400 kilometers an hour into the Ionian Sea. The Big Splash unleashes a 50-meter-tall wall of water that, within a few hours, wipes out coastal settlements across the Mediterranean. This catastrophe happened 8000 years ago--and a Mediterranean monster of similar magnitude could happen again. That's the scenario invoked in an analysis in last week's Geophysical Research Letters. "It was an extraordinary event, probably the largest tsunami unleashed...

Source: American Geophysical Union Date: November 28, 2006 Landslide At Mt. Etna Generated A Large Tsunami In The Mediterranean Sea Nearly 8000 Years Ago Geological evidence indicates that the eastern flanks of Mt. Etna volcano, located on Italy's island of Sicily, suffered at least one large collapse nearly 8,000 years ago. Pareschi et al. modeled this collapse and discovered that the volume of landslide material, combined with the force of the debris avalanche, would have generated a catastrophic tsunami, which would have impacted all of the Eastern Mediterranean. Simulations show that the resulting tsunami waves would have destabilized soft marine...

Monkeys appear in Grecian frescoes dating back to the Bronze Age 3,600 years ago, but monkeys aren't native to Greece or the Aegean isles. But it's clear that the artists actually saw these monkeys in Grecian frescoes, or at least talked to someone who did in great detail, because the depictions are so accurate that researchers can identify the monkeys, according to a new study. Vervet monkeys appear in a fresco from Akrotiri, Thera. They're known for their rounded muzzles, a white band on the forehead, an extended tail and elongated limbs -- all accurately shown in the fresco. Baboons...

"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...