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Scientists have used a computer program to decipher a written language that is more than three thousand years old. The program automatically translated the ancient written language of Ugaritic within just a few hours. Scientists hope the breakthrough could help them decipher the few ancient languages that they have been unable to translate so far. Ugaritic was last used around 1200 B.C. in western Syria and consists of dots on clay tablets. It was first discovered in 1920 but was not deciphered until 1932. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology told the program that the language was related to...

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...

Site of Western Extension to Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos In a LM IB context in excavations just to one side of the Royal Road some distance northwest of the Little Palace at Knossos, 327 children's bones were found in a burnt deposit in the basement of a building christened the North House. Originally attributed to between eight and eleven children provisionally aged between ten and fifteen years old, between 21% and 35% of these bones, which included skull fragments as well as other bones, all found in an unarticulated heap, exhibited "fine knife marks, exactly comparable to butchery marks on...

Four previously unknown shipwrecks have been discovered some 30 kilometers off the Bay of Irakleio, Crete, in recent underwater exploration conducted by the ephorate of underwater antiquities. The new finds comprise two Roman era shipwrecks, one containing 1st and 2nd-century Cretan amphorae and the other containing 5th-7th century post-Roman era amphorae, and two shipwrecks containing Byzantine amphorae, dated from the 8th-9th century and later. The finds, which were made south and east of the Dia islet, which lies 7 nautical miles north of Irakleio, were documented and taken ashore for further analysis. Three more recent shipwrecks were also discovered, as...

Turkey-Greece engage in mock dogfights over Cyprus as Israeli PM arrives GREEK AND Turkish jets tangled in mock dogfights in Cypriot airspace yesterday just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was arriving on the island, reports said. According to Sigma, around 11am three Greek Mirage-2000 fighters began shadowing two Turkish F-16 jets after the latter flew between Rhodes and Crete on their way from the eastern Mediterranean where Turkish ships were conducting wargames with live ammunition. The Turkish military exercise, the Foreign Minister said earlier, took place within Cyprus’ Exclusive Economic Zone, in waters south of the island and close...

A four-sided red jasper sealstone is among the finds unearthed during this season's excavation of the Minoan peak sanctuary at Vrysinas, located south of the city of Rethymnon. The whole area was officially announced and included in the archaeological sites list by the Central Archaeological Council of Greece. The sealstone, which is carved on all four surfaces with characters of the Minoan Hieroglyphic script, constitutes the sole evidence to date for the presence of this earliest Minoan style of writing in Western Crete. The excavation, which began in 2004, is conducted by the Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities under...

Minoan civilisation, Zakros Palace in particular, are the focus of the 11th International Cretological Congress on October 21-27 in Rethymnon, one of the three big cities on the island. The Minoan Zakros Palace, located on the eastern part of the island, is one of the four Minoan palaces -- the others are Knossos, Festos and Malia – uncovered by archaeological excavations last century. The palace spans 4,500 square metres (one fifth of the area of the Palace of Knossos) and was the religious and administrative centre for a settlement that spanned 8,000 square metres. The palace has two main structures,...

The daughter of a prominent New York lawyer has told of her amazing transformation from sheltered, society girl to seasoned combat veteran. Former Manhattan jetsetter Jane Blair swapped her pampered life in New York to become one of the first women on the frontline in Iraq. In her new memoir Hesitation Kills, Mrs Blair, now a 38-year-old captain in the Marine Reserves, recalls the moment that changed her life. She said: 'I grew up in this environment where I never had to work for a living. My dad told me, "I will always take care of you".' She was in...

Archaeologists on the island of Crete have discovered what may be evidence of one of the world's first sea voyages by human ancestors, the Greek Culture Ministry said Monday A ministry statement said experts from Greece and the U.S. have found rough axes and other tools thought to be between 130,000 and 700,000 years old close to shelters on the island's south coast. Crete has been separated from the mainland for about five million years, so whoever made the tools must have traveled there by sea (a distance of at least 40 miles). That would upset the current view that...

Excavator Nicholas Stampolidis said his team discovered more than 3,000 pieces of gold foil in the 7th-century B.C. twin grave near the ancient town of Eleutherna... The tiny gold ornaments, from 1 to 4 centimetres (0.4 to 1.5 inches) long, had been sewn onto a lavish robe or shroud that initially wrapped the body of a woman and has almost completely rotted away but for a few off-white threads... The woman, who presumably had a high social or religious status, was buried with a second skeleton in a large jar sealed with a stone slab weighing more than half a...

For a quarter century, Greek excavation director Nicholas Stampolidis and his dedicated team have been unearthing the untold stories of the people buried some 2,800 years ago in the necropolis of Orthi Petra at Eleutherna on Crete. Until now, the site has perhaps been best known for the tomb its excavators dubbed "A1K1," an assemblage of 141 cremated individuals, all but two of whom were aristocratic men who likely fell in battle in foreign lands. Excavated between 1992 and 1996, this elaborate rock-cut tomb was brimming with fantastic burial goods that date from the ninth to the seventh century B.C.,...

<p>Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected.</p> <p>That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures.</p>

Two British men have been arrested in connection with arson attacks on a medieval synagogue on the Greek island of Crete. The two men, who have not been named, are being held in the coastal town of Hania. A Greek man is also in custody and two Americans are being sought. Hania's Etz Hayyim synagogue has been targeted by arsonists twice this month. The UK embassy in Athens said two British men had been arrested on charges of arson. The BBC's Malcolm Brabant in Athens said, according to the police, the men are aged 23 and 33 and are nightclub...

An old stone quarry on the Greek island of Crete which has a network of underground tunnels could be the original site of the ancient Labyrinth, the maze that housed the Minotaur of Greek legend, scholars believe. An Anglo-Greek team believes that the site, near the town of Gortyn, has just as much claim to be the place of the Labyrinth as the Minoan palace at Knossos 20 miles away, which has been synonymous with the Minotaur myth since its excavation a century ago. The 600,000 people a year who visit the ruins at Knossos are told the site was...

(CNN) -- A 6.7-magnitude earthquake hit near the Greek island of Crete on Wednesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It struck at 12:30 p.m. (5:30 a.m. ET), the USGS said. It was centered about 80 miles (130 kilometers) off the city of Iraklion on Crete, the USGS said. An earthquake with a 6.7 magnitude is capable of causing significant damage, especially in areas of poor construction. There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. A staff member at Iraklion Airport told CNN they didn't feel the earthquake. Similar reports came from staff members at hotels just outside Iraklion and...

Arthur Evans, the eccentric Englishman who led the excavations, was, if anything, even more creative in his reconstruction of the Bronze Age than Schliemann had earlier been. The fabulously ancient palace of Knossos enjoys, as Gere points out in her arresting first sentence, "the dubious distinction of being one of the first reinforced concrete buildings ever erected on the island". The complex of buildings gawped at by thousands upon thousands of tourists every year owes less to the masons of the Minoan age than it does to the example of modernist architecture. On Crete, the archaic and the contemporary, both...

Since this disk was found in Crete, and the people of Crete today speak Greek, that's a good language to assume was spoken by the maker of the disk. Still, that's a guess, or a hypothesis, not a fact. Besides that, we know that not everybody on Crete spoke Greek in the Bronze Age. The classical Greeks mentioned people they called Eteocretans who did not speak Greek. Further, we know that Linear A, written by the Minoans on Crete before the Mycenean Greeks came, did not represent Greek. Professor Hubert LaMarle considers it to be an early Indo-Iranian language, related...

My favorite undeciphered script is the one found on the Phaistos disk, the flat circle of clay about six inches across found in the Heraklion Museum on Crete. The disk itself was discovered in 1908 and it has been deciphered every few years ever since. Unfortunately, no two people agree on what it says, as I mentioned before. Since so many other people are interested in this topic, I thought I'd include a few of the decipherments, just to show how different they can be. The first one comes from German... In this version, it's a very involved calendar and...

Archaeology is an inexact science, as Sir Arthur Evans, a flamboyant early practitioner, knew... an excavator can always promote an extravagant theory under the guise of interpreting the finds. As he started to unearth a prehistoric mound at Knossos in Crete at the turn of the 20th century, Evans put his imagination into high gear. He rebuilt parts of a 3,500-year-old palace in modernist style using cement and reconstructed fragmentary frescoes to suit his views on Bronze Age religion and politics. Evans boldly argued that the Minoans, as he called the early islanders, shunned warfare, conveniently forgetting about the ruined...

The rioting began in Athens late on Saturday soon after the shooting in the central Exarchia district, where youths threw petrol bombs at police, burnt dozens of cars and smashed shop windows. It quickly spread to Greece's second largest city of Thessaloniki and other towns in northern Greece. Cities on the holiday islands of Crete and Corfu also saw protests at the shooting, which prompted Interior Minister Prokopis Pavlopoulos to offer his resignation. Prime Minister Costas Karamanlis, whose fragile government has been rocked by a series of scandals, rejected it, a ministry spokeswoman said.

"They scream, they sing, they fall down, they take their clothes off, they cross-dress, they vomit," said Konstantinos Lagoudakis, the mayor of Malia, in an interview. "It's only the British people - not the Germans or the French." His anger echoed the frustration felt by the residents of many Mediterranean resorts, who have watched helplessly while their town centres are invaded by hordes of carousing British teenagers. "The government of Britain has to do something," Mr Lagoudakis said. "These people are giving a bad name to their country."

Jerome Eisenberg, a specialist in faked ancient art, is claiming that the disc and its indecipherable text is not a relic dating from 1,700BC, but a forgery that has duped scholars since Luigi Pernier, an Italian archaeologist, "discovered" it in 1908 in the Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete. Pernier was desperate to impress his colleagues with a find of his own, according to Dr Eisenberg, and needed to unearth something that could outdo the discoveries made by Sir Arthur Evans, the renowned English archaeologist, and Federico Halbherr, a fellow Italian... Dr Eisenberg, who has conducted appraisals for the US...

Subject: Learning Over the Years How to Balance Family and Work in an Industry Not Even Their Own Company Executives Understand By Renee E. Taylor (ATAW/AR) To you, my husband is a truck number, just a large, blue or red metal object that mysteriously gets your freight from point A to point B. One of thousands of tiny dots that appear on your computer screen as you sit in your air conditioned office which you leave each night to return to your wife, children and pets. A large, blue or red metal object that dispatchers and planners seen as an...

PARIS (AFP) - "The sea was driven back, and its waters flowed away to such an extent that the deep sea bed was laid bare and many kinds of sea creatures could be seen," wrote Roman historian Ammianus Marcellus, awed at a tsunami that struck the then-thriving port of Alexandria in 365 AD. "Huge masses of water flowed back when least expected, and now overwhelmed and killed many thousands of people... Some great ships were hurled by the fury of the waves onto the rooftops, and others were thrown up to two miles (three kilometres) from the shore." Ancient documents...

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...

Tiny in stature, big at heart By KERI WELHAM - The Dominion Post | Saturday, 19 May 2007 BIRTHDAY BOY: War veteran Arthur Stubbs, 103, remembers old comrades at Wellington's Greek Memorial. Arthur Stubbs was too old for World War II so he lied about his age. Now, at 103, he's catching up with 'young' mates from the battle of Crete. It was Arthur Stubbs' birthday yesterday and he turned 103. "That's all," he said, with a little smile. Mr Stubbs walked off a small plane at Wellington International Airport into a media posse. One minder took off his cap,...

Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed Media Contact: Todd McLeish, 401-874-7892 Santorini eruption much larger than originally believed; likely had significant impact on civilization KINGSTON, R.I. – August 23, 2006 – An international team of scientists has found that the second largest volcanic eruption in human history, the massive Bronze Age eruption of Thera in Greece, was much larger and more widespread than previously believed. During research expeditions in April and June, the scientists from the University of Rhode Island and the Hellenic Center for Marine Research found deposits of volcanic pumice and ash 10 to 80 meters thick...

It argues that the "palaces" could more likely be "temples" rather than residential buildings. For sure, archaeologists are quick to point out that certain parts of the palaces definitely had a religious function. But some go further. Archaeologist Oswald Spengler stated in the 1930s that these "palaces" were temples for the dead. His opinion was not taken seriously, as it went against the accepted belief. Wunderlich continued where Spengler had stopped. Both noted that the state of the palaces was particularly bizarre. Thousands of people are believed to have roamed the corridors of the Palace of Knossos, but the staircases...

Bulgarian archaeologists have continued their amazing streak at the ancient sanctuary of Perperikon, unearthing a temple five times larger than Athens' Acropolis... The Acropolis-rivalling temple dates back to the Bronze Age and is the biggest on the Balkans. The whole complex is spread over 7.5 square kilometres and covers the whole Perperikon peak. People came to pray at that spot for a period of over 2,000 years, archaeologists believe. The complex is checkered with metallurgy workshops and the team discovered many awls, and axe moulds. The discovery represents a success for the archaeologists because it is the first complex of...

I post this because it is about a true story. This is one of those good movies that only word of mouth can support. If you have a group you can contact the site to arrange a private screening for your group. Many local Greek Churches and organizations are arranging the screenings. http://www.crete1941.com/home4.htm info@the11thday.com or 916-972-1120 The website says many of the actors were actual decendents of those who fought back the Nazis. I have actually had the pleasure of meeting some of these actual fighters and have the honor of being related to one. These people beat back the...

Earthquake registering 6.2 on Richter scale rocks Greece, felt in many parts of Israel as well as Egypt Ynet An earthquake registering 6.2 on the Richter scale rocked Greece Sunday and was felt in many parts of Israel and Egypt as well. Director General of the Geophysical Institute of Israel Dr. Uri Frieslander said the earthquake hit the Greek island of Crete at 1:36 p.m. "The institute received many calls by residents who felt the quake, mainly along the coast," he said Ynet readers from the northern city of Haifa all the way to Beer Sheva in the south...

[T]he finds were excavated at a long-abandoned site on a hill overlooking the port of Chania in Western Crete, which has been identified with the Minoan city of Kydonia. Among the discoveries was an amphora containing an intact text written in linear B, the language of the court at Mycenae where the legendary Agamemnon ruled. Also found were two terracotta tablets containing texts in Linear A, an even older alphabet - used around 1700 years before the common era - which has not yet been deciphered. The ministry said the archaeologists found evidence of a violent fire believed to have...

Roman theatre goddesses unearthed in Crete 30/09/2005 - 3:10:36 PM The life-sized marble statues of two ancient Greek goddesses have emerged during excavations of a 5,000-year-old town on the island of Crete, archaeologists said today. The works, representing the goddesses Athena and Hera, date to between the 2nd and 4th centuries – a period of Roman rule in Greece – and originally decorated the Roman theatre in the town of Gortyn, archaeologist Anna Micheli from the Italian School of Archaeology told The Associated Press. “They are in very good condition,” she said, adding that the statue of Athena, goddess of...

Excavated in the summer of 1979, this four-room building set within a low enclosure (temenos) wall serves as a reminder that our views about a past culture may be subject to sudden and drastic change as the result of a single new discovery. The building, oriented roughly to the cardinal points and entered from the north, lies on the northern slopes of Mt. Iuktas some seven kilometers south of Knossos . In plan, it consists of an east-west corridor at the front off of which open three non-connecting rectangular rooms oriented north-south. In the east room were found large numbers...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. .................................................................. .................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should...

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Atlantis, the legendary island nation over whose existence controversy has raged for thousands of years, was actually Ireland, according to a new theory by a Swedish scientist. Atlantis, the Greek philosopher Plato wrote in 360 BC, was an island in the Atlantic Ocean where an advanced civilization developed some 11,500 years ago until it was hit by a cataclysmic natural disaster and sank beneath the waves. Geographer Ulf Erlingsson, whose book explaining his theory will be published next month, says the measurements, geography, and landscape of Atlantis as described by Plato match Ireland almost exactly. "I am...

50 ancient tombs uncovered From correspondents in Athens July 18, 2004 ARCHEOLOGISTS have discovered 50 tombs dating back to the late Minoan period, around 1400 BC, and containing a number of artifacts on the Greek island of Crete, ANA news agency reported today. The tombs were part of the once powerful ancient city of Kydonia, which was destroyed at the time but later rebuilt. The oldest among them contained bronze weapons, jewellery and vases and are similar to the tombs of fallen soldiers of the Mycenaean type from mainland Greece, said the head of the excavations, Maria Vlazaki. The more...

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Police uprooted thousands of cannabis plants on the island of Crete after a tip from police who saw three fields of the crop as they shadowed the Olympic torch relay in a helicopter, authorities said Wednesday. Officers from a police narcotics unit have destroyed more than 6,500 plants over the past three days, after the weekend discovery. Crete's mountainous landscape with its deep ravines is favored by cannabis growers, and police raids have increased in recent years after the deployment of police helicopters on the island. The Olympic flame is on a tour of Greece after...

Pitsidia

U.S. Base in Greece Stockpiles Equipment Thu Jan 22,11:11 AM ET By MIRON VAROUHAKIS, Associated Press Writer SOUDA BAY, Greece - The U.S. military base in Greece is stockpiling emergency medical equipment to dispatch if terrorists strike with biochemical or radiation devices during the Olympics. The rapid response unit at the Souda Bay Naval Base on the southern island of Crete is part of an international network being assembled to help safeguard the Aug. 13-29 Games — the first summer Olympics since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. "If the commander of the base calls...

Debate erupts anew: Did Thera's explosion doom Minoan Crete? William J. Broad Thursday, October 23, 2003 For decades, scholars have debated whether the eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean more than 3,000 years ago brought about the mysterious collapse of Minoan civilization at the peak of its glory. The volcanic isle (whose remnants are known as Santorini) lay just 110 kilometers from Minoan Crete, so it seemed quite reasonable that its fury could have accounted for the fall of that celebrated people. . This idea suffered a blow in 1987 when Danish scientists studying cores from the Greenland...

Dear Lord, There's a young man far from home, called to serve his nation in time of war; sent to defend our freedom on some distant foreign shore. We pray You keep him safe, we pray You keep him strong, we pray You send him safely home ... for he's been away so long. There's a young woman far from home, serving her nation with pride. Her step is strong, her step is sure, there is courage in every stride. We pray You keep her safe, we pray You keep her strong, we pray You send her safely home...

<p>Skull of an elephant. The animal's European ancestors had similar anatomies.</p> <p>IRAKLIO, Greece (AP) -- Researchers on the southern Greek island of Crete have unearthed the fossilized tusk, teeth and bones of a Deinotherium Gigantisimum, a fearsome elephant-like creature that might have given rise to ancient legends of one-eyed cyclops monsters.</p>