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Mount Etna, the volcano on the Italian island of Sicily, has erupted in spectacular fashion for the first time in two years. Etna sent a plume of fire and ash into the sky, several kilometres high.

Phoenician city not destroyedLife after supposed death for Motya near Trapani (ANSA) - Palermo, March 14 - An ancient Phoenician city unearthed in Sicily was inhabited after its supposed destruction, the head of an Italian dig team claims . "Our finds, including cooking pans, Phoenecian-style vases, small altars and pieces of looms, show Motya had a thriving population long after it is commonly believed to have been destroyed by the Ancient Greeks," said Maria Pamela Toti . The continued life of Motya had been put forward by various archaeologists over the years but until now no proof had been found...

Ancient Greek Bronze Fished from Sea Dazzles Italy By Estelle Shirbon ROME (Reuters) - Italy unveiled an ancient Greek bronze statue of a dancing satyr on Tuesday, five years after Sicilian fishermen dragged it from the Mediterranean seabed in one of the most important marine archaeological finds ever. The 2,500-year-old satyr went on public display inside Italy's parliament in Rome, where it will spend two months before being moved to a permanent home in Mazara del Vallo, the fishing village in western Sicily nearest to where it was found. "The sea has given us back an extraordinary heirloom of our...

Sicily: Elderly couple murdered by African refugee; some locals take revenge Posted by Ann Corcoran on September 4, 2015 You’ve probably seen the news of the grisly murders of an elderly husband and wife on Sicily. The wife, 70 years old, is believed to have been sexually assaulted before being thrown off a balcony to her death. This is an update. Sicily murdered I don’t think we even have to say ‘alleged’ murderer in this case. Mamadou Kamara was wearing clothes he stole from the victims and had his own bloody trousers in his possession . The refugee, Mamadou Kamara,...

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...

A deluge that swept the Land of Israel more than 7,000 years ago, submerging six Neolithic villages opposite the Carmel Mountains, is the origin of the biblical flood of Noah, a British marine archeologist said Tuesday. The new theory about the source of the great flood detailed in the Book of Genesis comes amid continuing controversy among scholars over whether the inundation of the Black Sea more than seven millennia ago was the biblical flood. In the theory posited by British marine archeologist Dr. Sean Kingsley and published in the Bulletin of the Anglo-Israeli Archaeological Society, the drowning of the...

Tsunami or melting glaciers: What caused ancient Atlit to sink? By Ofri Ilani At the bottom of the sea, some 300 meters west of the Atlit fortress, lies one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of the Mediterranean basin. About 20 years ago, archaeologists discovered a complex of ancient buildings and ancient graves with dozens of skeletons at the underwater site of Atlit-Yam. The team of marine archaeologists that excavated the site, headed by Dr. Ehud Galili of the Israel Antiquities Authority, came to the consclusion that an ancient settlement once existed there, but sank beneath the surface of the sea...

It's a terrifying vision: A violent eruption of Italy's Mount Etna triggers a massive collapse of one flank of the volcano, sending 35 cubic kilometers of debris--the equivalent of 10,000 Cheops pyramids--hurtling at 400 kilometers an hour into the Ionian Sea. The Big Splash unleashes a 50-meter-tall wall of water that, within a few hours, wipes out coastal settlements across the Mediterranean. This catastrophe happened 8000 years ago--and a Mediterranean monster of similar magnitude could happen again. That's the scenario invoked in an analysis in last week's Geophysical Research Letters. "It was an extraordinary event, probably the largest tsunami unleashed...

Source: American Geophysical Union Date: November 28, 2006 Landslide At Mt. Etna Generated A Large Tsunami In The Mediterranean Sea Nearly 8000 Years Ago Geological evidence indicates that the eastern flanks of Mt. Etna volcano, located on Italy's island of Sicily, suffered at least one large collapse nearly 8,000 years ago. Pareschi et al. modeled this collapse and discovered that the volume of landslide material, combined with the force of the debris avalanche, would have generated a catastrophic tsunami, which would have impacted all of the Eastern Mediterranean. Simulations show that the resulting tsunami waves would have destabilized soft marine...

A 12-METRE monolith, hacked out of limestone by stone-age humans some nine thousand years ago, has been found at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The enormous stone totem, now split in two and sitting in the Sicilian Channel between Tunisia and Sicily, was hewed from a rocky outcrop some 300m away when the Mediterranean Sea was still a dry basin. It’s now under 40m of water. The new study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, says the area was submerged about 9350 years ago (give or take 200 years) when the last Ice Age retreated. Before that time the...

The head of the Sicilian Mafia, on the run for over 20 year, has been using "sheep code" to communicate with allies, the BBC reports. Eleven men associated with mob boss Matteo Messina Denaro were arrested recently, and according to the Italian police, Denaro communicated with them by leaving bits of papers under a rock in a field near a farm in western Sicily. The communication method called "pizzini" includes writing the messages in a secret code, according to AFP. Among the men arrested during raids across Sicily on Monday, two were over 70 years old, one of them, Vito...

Thousands of people gathered in northern Spain on Sunday to demand a referendum vote for the independence of the country’s Basque region. Demonstrators holding long lengths of cloth formed human chains across several Basque cities, including the capital of Vitoria, Bilbao and San Sebastian. Many of the protesters wore the colors of the Basque flag -- red, white and green. The demonstration was organized by the pro-independence Gure Esku Dago ("It's in Our Hands") group, and was backed by several separatist parties and local figures. Spain’s Basque community has long asserted that it should be independent of the country, and...

FULL TITLE - The Coming Muslim Conquest of Italy: Will We Have to Ransom the Treasures of the Vatican from ISIS-Type Vandals? The news about illegal immigration into Italy and Southern Europe is stunning. Here are some illustrative headlines from recent news accounts: “Welcome to Italy: this is what a real immigration crisis looks like,” declares the British Spectator magazine, which adds that Italy is being “invaded.” And here’s another scary story: “How the migration crisis is shaking Europe at its core.” After all, it’s only 100 miles or so from Tunisia, in Africa, to the Italian island of Sicily—an easy...

In "Quest for the Phoenicians," three renowned scientists, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence and oceanographer Robert Ballard, geneticist Spencer Wells and archaeologist Paco Giles, search for clues about the Phoenicians in the sea, in the earth and in the blood of their modern-day descendents... Ballard looks at ancient shipwrecks along Skerki Bank off the island of Sicily... Paco Giles excavates a cave at the bottom of the rock of Gibraltar... Spencer Wells collects DNA from a 2,500-year-old Phoenician mummy's tooth, to extract its unique genetic code and compare it with DNA samples collected from men and women from Lebanon to Tunisia.

The archaeological park is located at the mouth of a river where wild parsley (selinon) grows, which was the origin of the name of the waterway. The city was founded by Megara Hyblaea residents in Sicily in the seventh century BC near two port-canals, now sanded over, and engaged in intense maritime trade. ''It was due to this expert use of the geographical role of Selinunte,'' historians say, ''that their inhabitants, in the space of just over two centuries, achieved an economic prosperity unrivaled in the Greek world or in that of Sicily/Magna Grecia.'' A city of grandiose size was...

Considering the Crusades in the Context of the Current Conflict with Radical Islamists By: Msgr. Charles PopeRecent and persistent attacks by radical Muslims, especially the most recent beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians, have many asking what can or should be done to end such atrocities. Military actions by numerous countries, including our own, are already underway. Most feel quite justified in these actions and many are calling for more concerted efforts to eliminate ISIS and related zealots who seem to know no pity, no reason, and no limits. I do not write here to opine on the need for...

Separately, the militants hope to cement their control of Libya then cross the Mediterranean disguised as refugees, according to letters seen by Quilliam the anti-terror group ISIS threatens sending 500,000 migrants to Europe as a 'psychological weapon' in chilling echo of Gaddafi's prophecy that the Mediterranean 'will become a sea of chaos' Italian press today published claims that ISIS has threatened to release the huge wave of migrants to cause chaos in Europe if they are attacked And letters from jihadists show plans to hide terrorists among refugees In 2011, Muammar Gaddafi ominously predicted war would come to Libya He...

The Institute of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Studies in Venice is the continuation of a Greek fraternity founded in 1498 The story began in 1498, a few decades after the fall of Constantinople, when the Greeks in Venice — la nazione greca (or the Greek nation) — gained permission from the Serene Republic to create a fraternity. Merchants and simple migrants from Western Greece, refugees from Constantinople, artists and others from Venetian-ruled Crete — all were Orthodox Christians who spoke Greek. The Most Serene Republic of Venice — the Serenissima — which ruled the Eastern Mediterranean, willingly offered them asylum; first,...

The tomb was built sometime between 800 B.C. and 760 B.C., a time when Corinth was emerging as a major power and Greeks were colonizing the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea. The tomb itself consists of a shaft and burial pit, the pit having a limestone sarcophagus that is about 5.8 feet (1.76 meters) long, 2.8 feet (0.86 m) wide and 2.1 feet (0.63 m) high. When researchers opened the sarcophagus, they found a single individual had been buried inside, with only fragments of bones surviving. The scientists found several pottery vessels beside the sarcophagus, and the tomb also contained...