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A powerful earthquake has struck off Turkey's Aegean coast, north of the Greek island of Samos, officials said. The 7.0 magnitude tremor, about 17km (11 miles) off the coast of western Izmir province, was felt as far away as Athens and Istanbul, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. There was no word on casualties but images from the Turkish city of Izmir showed buildings that had collapsed. An earthquake that struck Izmir in 1999 killed about 17,000 people. Reports said Friday's quake was also felt on the Greek island of Crete. Video on social media showed people searching through the...

An elegant summer palace once belonging to the Minoan aristocracy at Zominthos on Crete, first discovered in 1982, has yielded many more of its priceless secrets in a recent dig. It was found in this summer's dig that the original structure may have been up to three stories high and to date back to 2,000 BC. This year's excavations of the building, measuring 1,600 square meters, or 17,222 square feet, have also shown that the edifice contained ramps, a series of apartments and even religious altars. ...the aim of the new dig was to clarify what served as the access...

The team first studied the rules that the signs followed on the clay tablets and other accounting documents. Two problems had so far complicated the decipherment of Linear A fractions. First, all documents containing sums of fractional values with a registered total were damaged or difficult to interpret, and second, they contradicted uses of certain signs, which suggest the system changed over time. Thus, the starting premise had to rely on documents concentrated to a specific period (ca. 1600-1450 BCE), when the numerical system was in coherent use across Crete. To investigate the possible values of each fractional sign, the...

France is deploying two Rafale fighter jets and a naval frigate in the eastern Mediterranean because of tensions between Greece and Turkey. French President Emmanuel Macron has urged Turkey to halt oil and gas exploration in disputed waters in the area. A Turkish survey ship began such a mission on Monday, angering Greece. The area is rich in untapped energy. There are also tensions around Cyprus over rival exploration rights. The Republic of Cyprus and Greece do not accept any such rights for Turkish-controlled northern Cyprus in the region. France is also at odds with Turkey over the crisis in...

An estimated 50 workers at the Smithfield Foods pork plant in Crete briefly walked off the job Tuesday in protest after it was announced that the plant would reverse course and stay open. Local officials were told Monday that the plant would close to contain a growing coronavirus outbreak among workers. "Our Crete, Nebraska, facility remains operational," a company spokesman said Tuesday. "The company will make an announcement if there are material changes to its operations." The plant, roughly 25 miles southwest of Lincoln, employs about 2,000 people. At least 48 workers have tested positive for the coronavirus. Eric Reeder,...

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...

It was a few years ago that a Greek-American archaeological team made a startling discovery – they found the oldest indications of seafaring and navigation in the world, in an area called Plakia on Crete Island in Greece. It is an incredibly important discovery that is given little attention, despite the fact that it reached the top ten discoveries of 2010. Their research is forcing scholars to rethink the maritime capabilities of early human and pre-human cultures. The team of archaeologists were carrying out excavations in a gorge on the island of Crete when they discovered a Palaeolithic site in...

"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...

Emily Catherine Egan, a doctoral student at the University of Cincinnati in Ohio, studied the floor of the Throne Room at the Palace of Nestor, one of the best-preserved palaces of Mycenaean Greece, a civilization from the late Bronze Age. She found that the floors of the palace, located in the present-day Greek town of Pylos, were made of plaster, and were often painted with grids of bright patterns or marine animals. The creative decorations show how ancient Mycenaean artists used floors — together with painted ceilings and walls — to impress palace visitors, Egan said. "Mycenaean palatial floor paintings...

KO-RE-TE, PO-RO-KO-RE-TE [koreter, prokoreter] -- Such officials are known at both Knossos and Pylos. The titles bear a suspiciously close resemblance to the Latin terms curator and procurator ("guardian" and "manager, imperial officer/governor" respectively). The Linear B evidence suggests that the koreter was a local official in charge of one of the sixteen major administrative units within the Pylian kingdom, and the prokoreter was evidently his deputy.

Bulgarian archaeologists have found an image of the legendary labyrinth of King Minos, the Bulgarian National Radio reported. The exclusive find was unearthed near the village of Golyam Derven last week. The team of Professor Daniela Agre, who are doing excavation works in the area, stumbled upon the unique artefact while researching a an ancient Thracian tomb's entrance stone. The labyrinth image, which is carved on the slate, is perfectly preserved. The legendary labyrinth was considered a just a myth from the Greek mythology until the exclusive finding. According to the legends, King Minos ordered the construction of the labyrinth...

Cyprus, Greece, Israel to sign pipeline deal on Jan. 2 By DEMETRIS NELLAS December 22, 2019 ATHENS, Greece (AP) — The leaders of Cyprus, Greece and Israel plan to sign an agreement early in the new year for the building of the eastern Mediterranean natural gas pipeline, the Greek prime minister’s office announced Sunday. The agreement will be signed in Athens on Jan. 2 by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, Cypriot President Nikos Anastasiades and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As now planned, the pipeline will run across the Mediterranean from Israel’s Levantine Basin offshore gas reserves to the Greek...

Archaeologists have discovered large quantities of treasure, which may be called ‘Atlantean treasures,’ in ancient Minoan-era buildings in Crete. Excavations conducted this year by Lasithi Antiquities Ephorate on the western part of the islet Chryssi, a municipality of Ierapetra, eastern Crete, have unearthed an ancient Minoan settlement, which according to the Greek Ministry of Culture , supported a “flourishing economy” so advanced it had built stone tanks in which marine species were cultivated.

Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan said nuclear power should either be free for all states or banned completely. He warned that the “inequality” between states who have nuclear power and who do not undermines global balances. This comes amid global concern following news that Iran has exceeded limits to its uranium stockpile and was enriching the chemical to beyond limitations imposed by the Iran nuclear deal. Earlier this month, Tehran announced it would use advanced centrifuges prohibited under the deal. President Erdogan said: “The position of nuclear power should either be forbidden for all or permissible for everyone.” …

When the Bronze Age hit ancient Israel, the copper-rich region was able to quickly source seven of the eight ingredients needed to produce the alloy at Timna and other mines. But where tin -- another one-eighth of the metal's recipe -- came from has been a lingering mystery for scholars. A new paper from an international team of researchers proposes a surprisingly faraway source -- Cornwall. In a paper published in June on the open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS One, the authors analyze 27 tin ingots, or blocks, from five sites bordering the eastern Mediterranean Sea. For decades, researchers have...

The Minoans and their capital Knossos weren’t incinerated by volcanic blast from Thera or flattened by quake as thought, but tellingly: their writing system changed. The mystery of what happened to the Minoan civilization has tormented archaeologists for over a century, and the tale has now taken a new twist. Nothing happened to them, say archaeologists who have been excavating the island of Crete for over thirty years. This extraordinary people, who produced palatial architecture unparalleled in the Aegean region at the time, were not immolated by the volcanic eruption of Thera as once thought, crushed by earthquake, or squashed...

A large-scale study conducted by an international team of scientists has revealed that the mysterious skeletons of Roopkund Lake - once thought to have died during a single catastrophic event - belong to genetically highly distinct groups that died in multiple periods in at least two episodes separated by one thousand years... Situated at over 5000 meters above sea-level in the Himalayan Mountains of India, Roopkund Lake has long puzzled researchers due to the presence of skeletal remains from several hundred ancient humans, scattered in and around the lake's shores, earning it the nickname Skeleton Lake or Mystery Lake... Whole...

Sometime between 1400 and 1200 B.C., two Minoan men were laid to rest in an underground enclosure carved out of the soft limestone native to southeast Crete. Both were entombed within larnakes—intricately embossed clay coffins popular in Bronze Age Minoan society—and surrounded by colorful funerary vases that hinted at their owners’ high status. Eventually, the burial site was sealed with stone masonry and forgotten, leaving the deceased undisturbed for roughly 3,400 years.

An ancient fortress which is 3,000 - 3,200 years old and was built with the so called Cyclopean masonry has been found by archaeologists in Bulgaria's Rhodope Mountains, near the town of Zlatograd and the border with Greece, and is taken as evidence that Ancient Thrace was part of the Mycenaean Civilization. The previously undetected fortress is roughly dated to 1,200 BC, i.e. to the time of Ancient Troy and the Trojan War. It is located near Zlatograd, Bulgaria's southernmost town, near the southern slopes of the Rhodope Mountains, in an area that is only about 20 kilometers away from...

The Minoan palace of Zominthos was a complex with three-story buildings grounded in the rock at 1,200 meters above sea level. As early as 2000 BC, worshippers began placing offerings in clefts in the rock, such as "egg cups" - simple cup-shaped vases with a disc-like base - both painted and plain. The honorary director of the Antiquities Department, Dr Efi Sapounas-Sakellarakis, spoke enthusiastically... The palace of Zominthos, she notes, had more than 150 rooms. "...The large limestone floor slabs, which look like marble... were brought there from a quarry 20 kilometers away." ...This section yielded bronze daggers, seals, stone...