Stairs at Akrotiri. Copyright 2009 Rachel de Carlos
Posted on 07/22/2013 8:06:52 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Although ancient ruins in Akrotiri were discovered in 1860 by workers quarrying volcanic rock for the Suez Canal, large scale excavations there didn't begin until 1967.
An archeologist by the name of Spyridon Marinatos suspected there were extensive ruins beneath the farmlands at Akrotiri and wrote about his theory in 1936. Due to the outbreak of World War II and the Greek Civil War, he had to postpone his explorations. Earlier digs in the area had been destroyed by plowing of the fields and there were no written records of where they had taken place or what the findings were. A local, Nikos Pelekis, acted as guide for Marinatos and influenced the decision to dig in a location set back from the sea.
The logic behind the choice of locations was that the most dense portion of the city was going to be in a more protected area, not near the port. They believe the port area also has many structures and artifacts buried under the volcanic layers, but the archeologists were more interested in uncovering typical examples of daily life and building structure. They chose an area within reasonable travel distance from the port, that was also more easily defended in case of attack by invaders.
Spyridon Marinatos' excavations at Akrotiri were cut short after only seven years. He died at the site, at age 72, from a massive stroke. His tomb is near the entrance of the covered archeological site. The excavations were resumed under the direction of Christos Doumas in 1976, who predicted several decades more work would be needed to uncover everything in the area chosen by Marinatos.
(Excerpt) Read more at examiner.com ...
Stairs at Akrotiri. Copyright 2009 Rachel de Carlos
I would love to see a reconstruction of the city. How it looked before it was destroyed.
It is believed that this was Atlantis.
Could be, but there are other mythologies stories of cities disappearing into the sea — check Dwarka off the coast of Gujarat in India
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