Plato was first to set down the story of Atlantis. This classical Grecian, the 'father of Western philosophy,' was not composing a history or an eyewitness account, but using the tales he'd hear on the backstreets of his hometown Athens (just a day's sailing from Thera) and at his local port to write a moral fable. His story of Atlantis was meant to teach a lesson: that pride comes before a fall, and that even the mighty can be brought down through greed and ambition - a stark warning that is only too familiar to us today For him, the Atlanteans were a useful example, a vivid morality tale he could use to educate and entertain his followers. But inadvertently, it seems certain to me that he was passing on the oral history of a terrible event that shocked the ancient world. A nightmarish tale passed down through generations as a warning of the dreadful power of nature and the gods - and the uncomfortable truth that all great civilisations must come to an end. Plato's myth is, if you like, history by accident. Read more
Caphtor is a locality mentioned several times in the Bible. It is named as the place of origin of the Caphtorites, said in Genesis 10:13-14 to descend from Ham's son Mizraim (Egypt). Modern commentators and translators commonly identify Caphtor with Crete. Cyprus and Crete together are by some accounts identified as "the island of the Caphtorim". Read more
The massive eruption of the Thera volcano in the Aegean Sea more than 3,000 years ago produced killer waves that raced across hundreds of miles of the Eastern Mediterranean to inundate the area that is now Israel and probably other coastal sites, a team of scientists has found. The team, writing in the October issue of Geology, said the new evidence suggested that giant tsunamis from the catastrophic eruption hit coastal sites across the Eastern Mediterranean littoral. Tsunamis are giant waves that can crash into shore, rearrange the seabed, inundate vast areas of land and carry terrestrial material out to sea. The region at the time was home to rising civilizations in Crete, Cyprus, Egypt, Phoenicia and Turkey. Read more
Real Tsunami May Have Inspired Legend of Atlantis The volcanic explosion that obliterated much of the island that might have inspired the legend of Atlantis apparently triggered a tsunami that traveled hundreds of miles to reach as far as present-day Israel, scientists now suggest. The new findings about this past tsunami could shed light on the destructive potential of future disasters, researchers added. The islands that make up the small circular archipelago of Santorini, roughly 200 km southeast of Greece, are what remain of what once was a single island, before one of the largest volcanic eruptions in human antiquity shattered it in the Bronze Age some time between 1630 B.C. to 1550 B.C.
Extending from the northeast part of Santorini there is a line of about twenty submarine volcanic cones. By far the largest one is the Kolumbo submarine crater, with a crater that is about 1.5 km in diameter. Kolumbo was discovered in 1650 AD, when a major explosive eruption broke the ocean surface, sending destructive pyroclastic surges across the sea to the coast of Santorini. The eruption built up a small white pumice island on the crater rim, but it was quickly destroyed by the ocean waves. Position: Latitude: 36°30'N, Longitude: 25°27'E
This ISS Expedition 17 photograph of Santorini Volcano, Greece, was taken April 19, 2008 with a Kodak 760C digital camera using an 800 mm lens, for the ISS Crew Earth Observations experiment.
Archaeologists look to the earth for Minoan fate They created extraordinary artefacts for hundreds of years, revealing an aesthetic sensibility that influences Western civilization to this day. Then they simply disappeared. Scholars are seeking answers to one of the great mysteries of the ancient world: What happened to the Minoans of Crete, who controlled a thriving Mediterranean trade network from around 2,200-1,450 BC? Now NOVA senior science editor Evan Hadingham reports on new evidence that a massive tsunami struck the Bronze Age society 3,500 years ago, destabilizing the culture to such a degree that social chaos brought about its ultimate destruction.
Floyd McCoy, Windward Community College professor of geology and oceanography, hopes during a year and a half in Greece to resolve the "hugely controversial" question of when the Thera volcano erupted. He will investigate the Mediterranean's largest volcanic eruption in history as a Fulbright scholar. McCoy has spent the past 20 years studying geological evidence of the Late Bronze Age eruption of Thera volcano that led to the end of the Minoan culture on the island of Santorini.
On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Moses leading the Israelites through this wilderness out of slavery, Egypt's chief archaeologist took a bus full of journalists into the North Sinai to showcase his agency's latest discovery. It didn't look like much some ancient buried walls of a military fort and a few pieces of volcanic lava.
Egypt's chief archaeologist said on Monday scientists had found traces of volcanic lava in Sinai dating from about 1500 BC, the time of a massive eruption on the Greek island of Santorini.
Egyptian archaeologists on Monday presented white stones of pumice that they believe a tsunami in ancient times carried 530 miles across the Mediterranean to north Sinai. The pumice was discharged by a volcanic eruption in the ancient Greek island of Santorini in the 17th century B.C. Traces of this solidified lava foam that floats have been found in Crete and southwestern Turkey, but Egypt's archaeologists believe it also reached this site in the Sinai desert, about 4 miles south of the coast.