IN 2011 A DOCUMENTARY CALLED FINDING ATLANTIS AIRED ON television, in which a team was said to be searching for the remains of the lost island in an area of Spain, just north of Cadiz. Most archaeologists whom I know, and a number of other viewers as well, found the results less than compelling.
It seems that almost every year, there is an announcement made that someone has located the lost island of Atlantis, perhaps in the Bahamas or off the coast of Cyprus. Sometimes a television show results; sometimes a book is published.
Personally, I think the island is in plain sight, and always has been, for I, and many other archaeologists, suspect that if there is any kernel of truth underlying the myth of Atlantis at all, it is probably the volcanic Greek island of Thera, also called Santorini, which erupted during the middle of the second millennium BCE. We’ll return to this possible relationship in a bit, but first we should look at the actual excavations and discoveries that have taken place on the island since 1967.
Santorini lies about seventy miles north of Crete. The name Santorini is rather recent—it was the Venetians who gave the island that name, after Saint Irene. An older name, frequently used by archaeologists, is Thera, which the Greek historian Herodotus says comes from the name of a Spartan commander named Theras, who was the leader of a colony established there during the first millennium BCE. Even before that, the island was called Kalliste, meaning the “beautiful one” or “fair one,” which Herodotus said was the name that the Phoenicians gave to the island (even though kalliste is a Greek word). Some suggest that the very first name of the island may have been Strongili, which translates as “the round one” and which makes sense, since it is circular in shape. It is actually a volcano and is still active today.
Sometime during the middle of the second millennium, most likely in either the seventeenth or sixteenth century BCE, the volcano blew its top, scattering ash and pumice primarily to the south and east. This would have been during a time when the Minoans were flourishing on Crete and may have dramatically affected their civilization, either for the short or the long term. The explosion is said to have been four or five times more forceful than the most powerful volcanic eruption in modern times, the explosion of Krakatoa in Indonesia, which took place about 130 years ago, in 1883. Archaeologists and geologists have found the pumice from the Santorini eruption in excavations and at the bottoms of lakes in places ranging from Crete to Egypt to Turkey.
Eruption of Santorini
The entire middle part of the island is completely gone as a result of the explosion, with only the outer part remaining as an incomplete circle of land. The circle is broken in two places, which is where tons of water rushed in from the Aegean Sea to fill up the caldera that is hundreds of feet deep. That in turn most likely created a tidal wave, or tsunami, that affected places as far away as Crete. Huge blocks of stone can still be seen on the beach by the site of Amnisos, where they had probably been thrown out of place by the disaster. In the middle of the caldera today are several small islands that have popped up just in the last century as a result of the continuing, low-level volcanic activity. Today tourists (and archaeologists) can take a boat out to these little islands and hike on them. I can personally attest that the rocks are so hot that the heat can be felt through the soles of your shoes and everything stinks of sulphur, with an odor of rotting eggs. It is a unique, and not entirely pleasant, experience—but it is memorable.
The eruption also completely buried the Bronze Age city of Akrotiri, which is frequently called the Pompeii of the Aegean because of the deep ash layer that completely covered and preserved it. In some places on the island, the ash layer is so thick that it is quarried today, for use in things like cement. The ash fall filled the houses at Akrotiri, preserving some to the second story. Just as at Pompeii, it is as if life simply stopped here in a single instant, more than thirty-five hundred years ago.
With or without the myth of Atlantis, excavations at the site of Akrotiri have shed very interesting and important light upon life in the Bronze Age Aegean, because the eruption took place at a time when the inhabitants, as well as the Minoans from nearby Crete, were engaged in regular contact and international trade with places like Egypt and Canaan in the eastern Mediterranean.
It is clear from some of the remains found during the excavations that the site may have been nearly abandoned before the time of the final eruption. There are indications that a major earthquake, or perhaps multiple earthquakes, may have hit the island about a decade before the final destruction. At least some of the inhabitants had tried to repair the damage, though many may have already fled at the first sign of trouble. Today we know that earthquakes frequently precede eruptions. The ancients may have known that as well. Because no bodies or other human remains and only a few precious objects have been found despite nearly fifty years of excavation, it is in fact quite likely that most of the inhabitants cleared out before the end finally came, taking their most valuable and easily transportable belongings with them. But they still left behind plenty of things for us to find.
The Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos gets credit for discovering the site, but it wasn’t all that hard to find. A portion of the site was in a gully, down which water flowed every time it rained. That water had washed away much of the ash in that area, so that some pieces of the site could be readily seen. The excavations began in 1967.
Marinatos had wanted to start such excavations for nearly thirty years, ever since he published an article in the journal Antiquity in 1939. In that article, he had suggested that the Minoan civilization on Crete had been brought to an end, or at least was dramatically and adversely affected, by an eruption of Santorini at some point during the second millennium BCE. It was such a radical suggestion that the editors agreed to publish the article only if they were allowed to add in a note at the beginning, suggesting that he should undertake excavations in order to test his hypothesis.
Marinatos directed the Akrotiri excavations from 1967 until 1974, when he died at the site. The official verdict was that his death was caused by a massive stroke, resulting in him tumbling off the balk into a trench. He is buried at the site, but in true archaeological fashion, I am told that it took several efforts before a proper grave could be dug, because they kept hitting remains from the ancient site. (I should note that there are similar problems when trying to place the supporting posts every time a new roofing system is installed, because they keep hitting ancient remains when digging the holes for the posts.)
Marinatos made discoveries at the ancient site from the very first day that he began digging. The excavations continued after his death and are today led by the well-known archaeologist Christos Doumas. Even though the site has been continuously excavated for nearly fifty years at this point, it is estimated that only a small percentage of the ancient town has been uncovered.
In many places, a situation similar to that seen at Pompeii was encountered, in which the original wood or other organic material had decomposed and otherwise disappeared, leaving an empty space in the now-hardened volcanic ash. Into these spaces, excavators have poured cement or plaster of Paris (just as at Pompeii), which is then colored brown, to imitate the original wood. In this way, the buildings remain preserved up to their second story and sometimes beyond, just as Marinatos and Doumas found them, and are still rendered safe for both the tourists and the archaeologists who wander among them. The architectural continuity of Santorini is such that if the ruins were painted white and blue, the ancient town would be virtually indistinguishable from one of the modern villages on the island.
The ash is everywhere at Akrotiri, having gone into every nook and cranny of the site after the eruption. As a result, it has preserved everything as it was at the time of the explosion. Thus, large storage jars remain and can be excavated in place, though often fallen over from their original position. Other large artifacts, like wooden beds, also have been carefully excavated and retrieved, using the lost-wax technique to reconstruct them when they have disintegrated and left empty spaces in the ash.
Quite a bit of pottery has been recovered during the excavations, as well as objects made out of stone and other materials. Some of them, especially the pottery, are painted with marine scenes featuring dolphins and octopi. Others show nature scenes, including flowers, leaves, and long-stemmed grass, and birds in flight that look a lot like the swallows that can be seen on the island today.
Wall paintings adorned the rooms in some of the houses. One of these, which features papyrus plants in a naturalistic scene that covers all four walls of the room, also has two of these little swallows interacting. In fact, the paintings at Akrotiri are among the best preserved that we have found from the Bronze Age Aegean, rivaling those found at Knossos. One is the so-called Nilotic Fresco, which features a scene that might be depicting the Nile in Egypt. It has a leaping feline chasing a duck or goose. On both sides of the river, or stream, are what look like palm trees or perhaps papyrus plants. It was found in a house—the so-called West House—along with several other frescoes that have nautical or perhaps non-Theran scenes. It is possible that the house belonged to a ship captain or to someone who had traveled overseas.
Another rather exotic-looking wall painting shows monkeys swinging from trees and generally hanging about, as monkeys like to do. The only thing is, these monkeys are blue, with white cheeks, which seems a little strange. There is a similar wall painting at Knossos on Crete, also showing blue monkeys, and there are two little blue monkey figurines with yellow cheeks that were found at Mycenae and Tiryns on the Greek mainland.
What is even stranger is that monkeys are not indigenous to the Aegean region. It turns out that there is a species of monkey in Africa called a green guenon, whose fur can be a bluish-green color and who have yellow or whitish cheeks. They are found in areas like Nubia and were prized as pets by the pharaohs of New Kingdom Egypt, who occasionally sent them as gifts to rulers in other countries. So, strange as it may seem, it looks as if these paintings, and the figurines, are correct in their representations of the monkeys. They may represent a group that someone had seen in Egypt or that had been sent over as a gift from Egypt to the rulers of Santorini or Crete.
One painting that seems a masterpiece shows two animals that look like ibexes, or wild goats, as typically found on Greek islands. These two in particular are each painted with a single bold stroke that goes from the tip of the tail all the way up to the neck and then the head of the animal, with the other details then added in as bold lines as well. This masterfully simple painting technique completely captures the two animals.
A number of human figures also are depicted. One shows two young boys who seem to be boxing, which has been mentioned in passing in an earlier chapter, in connection with the Priest-King Fresco at Knossos. They are almost naked, wearing only loincloths, and have shaved heads with clumps of hair hanging down in curls. Where their hair is cut close to the scalp, it is shown as blue rather than black. There also is a painting of a naked young man holding two long strings of fish that he has just caught. This painting shows even more of his hair shaved off and fewer of the tendrils or ringlets. It has been suggested that the young boys had more and more hair shaved each year, perhaps in a ritual, so that by the time they were in their late teens, they had essentially a crewcut.
Other pictures show young women engaged in a variety of activities, including a number who are picking flowers like crocuses and saffron. Some of these young women also have mostly shaved heads, just like the boys. If there was some sort of age-related ceremony related to hair, it apparently extended to the young women as well as the men. Many of the women are depicted wearing earrings and other jewelry and wearing elaborate dresses, so we can easily reconstruct how they adorned themselves back then.
In the West House is another painting in addition to the Nilotic scene, which is known as the Miniature Fresco or the Flotilla Fresco. On one end of the scene, we can see warriors marching off to battle. They are dressed in a fashion like some of the warriors whom Homer describes in the Iliad. They wear boar-tusk helmets on their heads and carry what are called Tower Shields, which are long enough to cover a person from the neck down to the lower legs. Behind the warriors is a large building, with women standing on the roof apparently waving goodbye to the warriors. There also are what look like cows and other herd animals, and a herdsman in the distance above them, but below them is a scene with a few boats and men who are sideways or upside-down—which is the way that artists in the Bronze Age depicted dead and drowning people. The scene is usually interpreted as a naval battle, though it also has been suggested that it is a scene of sacrifice.
The fresco continues with a flotilla scene, showing as many as a dozen or more ships departing a port that may or may not be on Santorini. The men row their way across the sea, accompanied by cavorting dolphins, until they reach a second city, at which point they tie up the ships and presumably disembark. This part of the fresco has been the topic of much discussion among archaeologists, with some focusing on the design and depiction of the ships and others focusing on where they might have begun their voyage and where they might have ended it. Suggestions include the possibility that this is a voyage to or from either Egypt or Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), but there has not yet been any consensus on these interpretations.
Santorini also has been at the forefront of a huge debate among Bronze Age Aegean archaeologists ever since 1987, when a radical redating of the volcanic eruption was proposed. It used to be thought that the Santorini eruption took place in about 1450 BCE. Since a certain style of pottery, known as Late Minoan (LM) Ib pottery, was in vogue at the time of the eruption, it used to be thought this type of pottery should also be dated to about 1450 BCE.
As a result of new analysis of radiocarbon dates from the site and nearby, however, it has been proposed that the eruption took place in or around 1628 BCE, rather than 1450 BCE, almost two full centuries earlier. Since the date of the eruption and use of LM Ib pottery are still tied together, that means that any level at any site that contains such pottery actually dates to the seventeenth century BCE, not the fifteenth century BCE. This became known as the high chronology, because it proposes a much earlier date for these historical events.
Sturt Manning, now of Cornell University, has been at the forefront of the discussions about the redating of the eruption since they first began. He has published numerous articles on the subject as well as a book called A Test of Time. One of the pieces of evidence that is central to his dating is a piece of wood from an olive tree that had been buried by ash during the eruption. The olive wood dates to about 1628 BCE.
The redating assumes the accuracy of the new radiocarbon dates. But carbon dating is acknowledged to have some problems associated with it, including fluctuations in the ratio of carbon in the atmosphere and the possibility of contamination in the samples, and so not everyone has accepted this change in chronology. Some are willing to accept a bit of a change, but only pushing the date of the eruption back to 1550 BCE, rather than all the way back to 1628 BCE, thereby creating a middle chronology to go with high and low Santorini chronologies.
As an aside, it should be noted that the redating of the eruption, regardless of which date one accepts, means that it cannot be linked in any way, shape, or form to the parting of the Red Sea or any of the Ten Plagues associated with the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Few scholars had ever wished to connect these events anyway—though it is a favorite suggestion of pseudo-archaeologists—since the eruption occurred at least a century, and perhaps as much as four centuries, before the Exodus even possibly took place.
For me, it seems likely that the high chronology is correct, but the debate is ongoing. I highlight this here to show that, even when we have lots of buildings, pottery, and other artifacts from a site, and we know relatively when it was flourishing, we cannot always be certain about the absolute, or chronological, date. We will discuss this issue, as well as radiocarbon dating itself, more in depth in a later chapter.
Santorini and Akrotiri are of great interest to archaeologists because they are central to any discussion about international trade and contact that may have been ongoing between Greece, Egypt, and the Near East more than thirty-five hundred years ago. But they also are of interest to the general public because of the possible connections to the legend of Atlantis.
As mentioned previously, I tend to believe that there is a kernel of truth lying at the bottom of many of the Greek myths and legends, for I think they probably based such tall tales on some aspect of their reality. Thus, I think that something did happen to spark the stories about the Trojan War. I also think that the eruption of Santorini in the seventeenth century BCE (or the fifteenth century, for that matter) may be the real event that underlies the whole story of Atlantis. Here I am dangerously close to being in the realm of the pseudo-archaeologists, hunting for what may be fictional places, but I’ll explain briefly why I believe the way I do.
The story of Atlantis comes to us courtesy of the Greek philosopher Plato. In two of his shorter works, called the Timaeus and the Critias respectively, which were written in the fourth century BCE, more than a thousand years after Thera’s eruption, Plato tells us about an incredible civilization and an island that sank, in a day and a night, beneath the waves, never to be seen again. It is in the Timaeus that he says specifically, “there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune . . . the island of Atlantis . . . disappeared in the depths of the sea.” He never says where Atlantis was located, except that it was “an island situated in front of the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Heracles; the island was larger than Libya and Asia put together.”
An Egyptian priest, Plato says, told the initial story of Atlantis to a visiting Greek lawgiver named Solon sometime after 590 BCE. The priest told him that the events had taken place nine thousand years before their time, though—quite frankly—nine hundred years before Solon fits better, since that would put the events back at about 1500 BCE, rather than back at 9600 BCE during the Neolithic Age when there weren’t yet any complex cultures (despite what some pseudo-archaeologists claim). The story was then handed down by Solon to his son and then his son’s son, and so on, until it reached Plato somewhere around the year 400 BCE.
Plato also gives a very detailed description of what Atlantis looked like, including that it was built of concentric and alternating rings of land and water, with specific measurements of various parts of the city and so on. But since his description of its location is pretty general, people have looked for it in all sorts of places, including the Bahamas, off the coast of Cyprus, and everywhere in between, as has been mentioned.
None of the reported findings has yet panned out. Even when there is a similarity in physical layout, they are either natural formations or show no relationship to Greek culture—or both. Santorini comes closest, but even there the date is way off, as we saw.
One could—and probably should—argue that Atlantis is a mythical place invented by Plato in order to describe what he thinks the perfect city and society might look like. There is, therefore, no reason to believe that we should be able to go out and find it. The eruption of Santorini, however, would have been both heard and felt as far away as Egypt. The Egyptians also would have seen the cloud resulting from the eruption and eventually they would have seen pieces of pumice floating on the water and ending up on the northern shores. There has even been a suggestion by some Egyptologists and other scholars that a well-known Egyptian inscription called the Tempest Stele may be a contemporary account of what they saw and heard during and after the eruption.
Moreover, if the Minoans and the Cycladic islanders, from places like Santorini, stopped coming to Egypt at least temporarily after the eruption, as seems quite likely to have happened, then to the Egyptians it would have seemed as if a great island empire had disappeared. From the point of view of those who had living in Akrotiri, and perhaps elsewhere on the island, their world had indeed come to an end in a single day and night of misfortune.
Thus, the eruption of Santorini could be the basis for Plato’s story of Atlantis. But even if it is not, the archaeological finds that have been made at the site of Akrotiri by Marinatos, Doumas, and others have shed wonderful light on the Bronze Age Aegean during the second millennium BCE, which—in my opinion—was among the most fascinating periods of human history.
