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Olympia, the Sanctuary of Zeus and venue of the Olympic Games in Ancient Greece, was probably destroyed by tsunamis that reached far inland, and not as previously believed, by earthquakes and river flooding... Paläotsunamis that have taken place over the last 11,000 years along the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean. The Olympic-tsunami hypothesis has been put forward due to sediments found in the vicinity of Olympia, which were buried under an 8 metres thick layer of sand and other debris, and only rediscovered around 250 years ago. "The composition and thickness of the sediments we have found, do not fit...

More than 1,000 tourists a day visit the island of Santorini from cruise ships in the peak season. They use traditional transport on the hilly terrain - where cars cannot go - and are attracted to idyllic white houses in places such as the principal town of Fira. Every day the donkeys make four to five journeys up its 520 white cobbled steps in temperatures of up to 86F (30C). Animal rights activists claim donkeys are increasingly left with spinal injuries and open wounds from ill-fitting saddles. They say that, with obesity on the rise, the animals are being forced...

...by resolving discrepancies between archeological and radiocarbon methods of dating the eruption, according to new University of Arizona-led research... "It's about tying together a timeline of ancient Egypt, Greece, Turkey and the rest of the Mediterranean at this critical point in the ancient world -- that's what dating Thera can do," said lead author Charlotte Pearson, an assistant professor of dendrochronology at the UA Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research... Archeologists have estimated the eruption as occurring sometime between 1570 and 1500 BC by using human artifacts such as written records from Egypt and pottery retrieved from digs. Other researchers estimated the...

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...

A 3,500-year-old inscription on a stone block found in Egypt is what archaeologists say the oldest weather report of the world. The inscription on a six-foot-tall calcite stone, called the Tempest Stela, describes rain, darkness and "the sky being in storm without cessation, louder than the cries of the masses," according to Nadine Moeller and Robert Ritner at the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute who have translated the 40-line inscription. The stela's text also describes bodies floating down the Nile like "skiffs of papyrus." "This was clearly a major storm, and different from the kinds of heavy rains that Egypt...

Two olive branches buried by a Minoan-era eruption of the volcano on the island of Thera (modern-day Santorini) have enabled precise radiocarbon dating of the catastrophe to 1613 BC, with an error margin of plus or minus 10 years, according to two researchers who presented conclusions of their previously published research during an event on Tuesday at the Danish Archaeological Institute of Athens. Speaking at an event entitled "The Enigma of Dating the Minoan Eruption - Data from Santorini and Egypt", the study's authors, Dr. Walter Friedrich of the Danish University of Aarhus and Dr. Walter Kutschera of the Austrian...

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...

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...

Pumice as a Time Witness Technische Universität WienJune 23,2008 Three different pumice samples A chemist of Vienna University of Technology demonstrates how chemical fingerprints of volcanic eruptions and numerous pumice lump finds from archaeological excavations illustrate relations between individual advanced civilisations in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thanks to his tests and to the provenancing of the respective pumice samples to partially far-reaching volcanic eruptions, it became possible to redefine a piece of cultural history from the second millenium B.C. Vienna (TU). During the Bronze Age, between the years 3000 and 1000 B.C., the Mediterranean was already intensely populated. Each individual culture,...

According to a recent international study, the volcano of the island Santorini, Greece, erupted in the 16th century BC and not earlier. The survey characterized a number of research studies that took place in the past and have indicated that Santorini's volcano may have erupted a century earlier, as unreliable because the method based on tree-ring measurements that they used, could not provide them with accurate results. An international team of researchers led by Paolo Cherubini from the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) has demonstrated in the scientific journal Antiquity, that this method cannot provide...

Archaeologists working on Iasos on Turkey’s Aegean coast have recently discovered that the ancient city was buried under a mountain of ash caused by the explosion of Mt. Thera on Santorini 3,600 years ago. Excavation works have also revealed a sewage system that was in place in the 4,000-year-old city and tunnels to the city’s theater... Spanu said columns that were found one meter underground provided vital information about the history of the city. “Following the explosion of the volcano Thera, which also caused the destruction of the Minoan civilization on the islands of Crete and Santorini, the ancient city...

A new study of insect pests found in an ancient storage jar on the Greek island of Santorini suggests the major volcanic eruption that took place there around 1600 B.C. -- and which may have inspired the legend of Atlantis -- happened in early summer. The "Atlantis" eruption was one of the most significant volcanic eruptions in human history. The blast is credited for not only ending the Minoan civilization, but also for affecting ancient Egypt and other communities around the eastern Mediterranean, explained Eva Panagiotakopulu, a palaeoecologist and fossil-insect expert at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Based on...

Geological testing was done at the site in 2005, for the purpose of placing pillars in solid ground so that the stability of the roof would not be an issue in the event of an earthquake. What they found while using high resolution travel time tomography, a method of getting images from under the surface of the earth using waves of energy, were underground cavities. These were both man made and natural. The man made gaps in the earth were filled with rocks, ceramics, and other items of interest to archeologists. Before drilling the new shafts and setting the pillars...

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....

While approximately forty buildings have been uncovered at Akrotiri, there are six that have been given more attention than the others. The architecture and function of each building is different. The largest building uncovered so far, Xeste 4, is three stories high and believed to be a public building because of its dimensions. The staircase had fragments of frescoes on either side depicting males ascending in a procession. The second largest building, Xeste 3, was at least two stories high, with fourteen rooms on each floor. The rooms were decorated with paintings and some had more than one door. One...

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...