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.
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What word would a people use for a land buried under ice (frozen water) if they did not have a word for ice?
Would the word be water? Would the say the land was inundated and sunk beneath the waters?
What land beyond the gates of Hercules and as large as Eastern North Africa exists buried beneath the waters?
Anartica. Just imo.
> I’ve read recently that some believe Santorini may have been close to super-volcano status.
> I just completed reading the 1965 book Krakatoa and many first hand accounts...It was no picnic either.
Nor the Taupo explosion in NZ. There is one theory running around that New Zealand was, up until the Taupo explosion, settled by Phoenecians. The archaeologist is a neighbor of mine, and his findings are, on the surface, possible.
I read a theory somewhere that the Santorini ash fallout could have been the cause of the darkening of the sky in Egypt around the time of Moses.
Plausible...
The longer I live in the South Pacific, the more I come to realize that there is a WHOLE LOT of history that has never been recorded, ever.
And that this world is ALOT older and wickeder than most folk imagine. (with the possible exception of Robert E Howard).
What is now Indonesia being Atlantis? Sure, maybe, why not?
Our modern civilization brings along with it many, many biases. But nobody has successfully — to my satisfaction — explained what happened in the Pacific, while the rest of our Civilization was off fighting Trojan Wars or building Noah’s Ark (which must have had outboard motors and lots of petrol, to drop off the kangaroos in Australia and the kiwis and tuataras in New Zealand, and still make it back in time to Mt Ararat for the floods to settle down...)
The Pacific is a very old, very antient place, full of evil that has been practised for many millenia. Yet we know next-to-nothing about its History.
Like I said: Atlantis in Indonesia? Plausible. I would not be one bit surprised.
*DieHard*
My neighbor is a 60 year old guy from NZ and he believes the same.
What word would a people use for a land buried under ice (frozen water) if they did not have a word for ice? Would the word be water? Would the say the land was inundated and sunk beneath the waters?Hey, nice! Very good idea, imho.
I agree. There was a story (I forget from whom) who wrote that the polynesians are a mixture of african and pacific peoples as a result of the Phoenecian trading. The islanders (Guam, Figi, Hawaii) were among the largest, most massive peoples of the world with 300 lbs being normal. Even today, 300 lbs is common and they have among the peoples of the earth the most massive frames and bodies.
Gypies are also larged boned and can be extremely large, but that is a separate geneology.
The Phoenecians were a mixture of Semitic peoples, being Lebanese and Israeli. Indeed, at that time, there was probably no difference between the peoples and they were probably viewed as one people with different kings.
Nice link...
Should we bring up the Olmecs and how they found their way to MesoAmerica.
Phoenicians....In the old testament, it was they who controlled the “Gates of their Enemies”. IMO, the Judahites were the bookkeepers and bankers, just as they are today.
> My neighbor is a 60 year old guy from NZ and he believes the same.
There are some really... interesting... rock carvings that require explanation. They come from the Taupo region. One of them is a very, very detailed-if-crude map of the globe.
A natural formation, the result of erosion? Shyeah right — I think not so. Someone did it, and that someone had a technological capability that surpassed dugout catamaran canoes (as marvelous as that maritime innovation was: the subject of separate discussion). These Taupo folk could quite clearly circumnavigate the globe and check out the coast-lines of all continents, and keep careful records, and return home within a lifetime, then etch their map onto volcanic rock. Their writings suggest Phoenecia.
I’ll keep an open mind on this one. Wide, wide open. Vikings were supposed to have found NZ at some point, too. And the Chinese. And the Spaniards.
Any of them easily could have: the prevailing currents would have virtually guaranteed it. One would have to be really unlucky to be in the Pacific Ocean and not eventually be sucked by some current or another smack into New Zealand (check it out).
Like I said, the true history of the South Pacific is lost in antiquity, and it is veiled in darkness and evil, amongst great civilizations with no written language, only tradition and oral history that is quickly disappearing. In real terms we have absolutely no idea what went on here.
No idea at all.
*DieHard*
Greek ping
Pumice from the eruption is still regularly washing up on the beaches of Santorini. I’ve pick up all sorts of the stuff there. Another fascinating aspect of that island is the different colored ash cliffs. Like nothing anywhere else I’m told.
I still think Southeast Asia and perhaps parts of India as Atlantis. It sure fits what Plato described it as.
That's my first choice as of now. It has changed before though...maybe again.
I used to think it was in the Mediterranean Sea.
What about Lemuria, an ancient mythical civilization somewhere in the Pacific. Has any archeologist given it credence or is it just a myth?
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