Underwater City Starts Yielding Secrets
Divers Find Pottery, Streets, Courtyards, Tombs and Buildings
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(Oct. 22) -- Scientists have known for 40 years that a 5,000-year-old city lay obscured by water off southern
Greece. But divers haven't had a chance to study the ruins until now.
A team from the University of Nottingham in England is working with the Greek government in exploring the
site. So far, archaeologists and geologists have learned that Pavlopetri is about 1,000 years older than they first
thought, according to the BBC.
Scientists are just beginning to unlock the mysteries of Pavlopetri, a submerged city discovered 40 years ago off
Greece. During a dive earlier this year, researchers from the University of Nottingham in England determined
that the city was 5,000 years old, more than 1,000 years older than first believed. Here, a diver from the team
surveys the site in an undated photo.
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Divers measure an artifact at the site. They have found relics ranging from pottery shards to the remains of
streets and buildings. The city is important because humans haven't changed it since the sea swallowed it in
1000 B.C., said Elias Spondylis, an official with the Greek underwater antiquities department. "It represents a
frozen moment of the past," he said.
A diver surveys the remains of a building. This year's expedition opened a five-year study of Pavlopetri.
Researchers plan to publish their complete findings in 2014. (Sources: bbb.co.uk, guardian.co.uk)
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The Bronze Age site is believed to have been submerged since 1000 B.C.
In an interview in the Guardian, Jon Henderson, associate professor of underwater archaeology at Nottingham,
explained the significance of the site. "It has remains dating from 2800 to 1200 B.C., long before the glory days
of classical Greece," he said. "There are older sunken sites in the world but none can be considered to be
planned towns such as this, which is why it is unique." The city may have inspired the myth of the lost city of
Atlantis, the Guardian said.
The divers have found a wealth of material on the sea floor, including pottery shards, streets, courtyards, tombs
and 97,000 square feet of buildings, the Guardian reported. "But what really took us by surprise was the
discovery of a possible megaron, a monumental structure with a large rectangular hall, which also suggests that
the town had been used by an elite, and automatically raised the status of the settlement," Henderson said.
The site was discovered in 1967 by Nicholas Flemming, a marine scientist at the University of Southampton,
the BBC said. He is a part of the new expedition team, which plans to study the city for five years and publish
its research in 2014, the BBC said.
Greece's underwater antiquities department is co-directing the study. The site "is significant because as a
submerged site it was never reoccupied," Elias Spondylis, an official with the agency, said in an interview with
the Guardian. "As such it represents a frozen moment of the past."
For more on the team's discoveries, go to this link
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