The Lost Empire of Atlantis Read online

  CHAPTER 2

  UNDER THE VOLCANO

  Sixty-nine miles north of Crete lay an island in the Aegean Sea that might, we thought, yield the answers to the sudden disappearance of the Minoans. We were off to Santorini: known in ancient times as Thera.

  We arrived late at night, exhausted, delayed by strong northerly winds. The Med, usually so calm and peaceful, can catch you out: within six hours of a 30-knot wind, the waves can reach 3 metres (10 feet) high. The Meltemi in particular is a violent wind which whips up in summer with little warning, often creating havoc with ships and ferries alike (see map). After that journey, even a short taxi ride felt like an expedition. Tired as we were, Marcella and I were excited as we approached our new destination: the Apanemo Hotel, built high on a rocky promontory. Although it was dark and we could hardly see a thing, we were finally here, safe, on an island that the world’s first historian, Herodotus, called ‘Kalliste’ or ‘The Most Fair’.

  We awoke the next morning to a marvellous view overlooking the central lagoon, the so-called caldera or ‘cooking pot’, the volcano that had once been Santorini’s molten heart. It sits on top of the most active volcanic centre in what is known as the South Aegean Volcanic Arc and we could see the effects of its violent geological past from our colourful Greek-style bedroom. The great crater blown out from its middle is spectacular: about 7.5 by 4.3 miles (12 by 7 kilometres) long and surrounded by steep cliffs 300 metres (980 feet) high on three sides. The water in the centre of the lagoon is nearly 400 metres (1,300 feet) deep, making it an extraordinarily safe harbour for all kinds of shipping. The islets of the upstart volcanic islands, Nea Kameni and Palae Kameni, lay right in front of us, the choppy narrow channel between them churned up by the northerly winds that had plagued us the day before. Far below us, two white cruise liners half the size of matchsticks were entering the deep blue of the caldera.

  Today, the island’s shape resembles a giant round black fruit cake with the centre gouged out, leaving a circular rim of inky volcanic soil surrounding the central lagoon. Like the icing sugar on a wedding cake, white villages tumble down in terraces and then cling for dear life to the caldera’s circular rim and dramatic cliffs.

  By chance I knew Thera reasonably well but only, as it were, from underneath. In the1960s I was navigator of the submarine HMS Narwhal, attached for two months to the Greek navy, which had asked us to take periscope photographs in the caldera.

  A submerged submarine is the same weight as that of the volume of water it displaces. The weight of this volume of water varies with temperature and salinity – the warmer the water, the lighter the submarine must become. To maintain neutral buoyancy the submarine’s weight is altered by pumping out or flooding in water. Submarines are sensitive – 455 litres (100 gallons) of water was all that was required to achieve Narwhal’s correct weight when the submarine was moving slowly. (Though Narwhal displaced 3,000 tons when dived.)

  There are to this day underground springs and volcanic fissures which spew hot water and magma into the base of Thera’s lagoon. We did not know how these would affect the temperature and salinity of the lagoon and hence the amount of water we would need to pump out of the submarine as we travelled at periscope depth. Neither were we sure if we had enough pumping capacity to deal with the caldera.

  The problem was accentuated because we would move over the hot volcanic springs as we navigated the caldera. That meant that the submarine’s buoyancy could be continuously changing. The entrance channel to the lagoon was narrow – wide enough for us, but tight. The narrowest part of the deep entrance to the caldera was some 183 metres (600 feet) wide – about the length of a ferry sideways on. However, the channel here was nearly 305 metres (1,000 feet) deep – plenty of room to get underneath passing ferries, so we were reasonably relaxed.

  After the reconnaissance, we set off back to Zakinthos for a rendezvous with some Greek girls on the beach at sunset. They were going to show us where turtles came ashore to mate and lay their eggs. Then we would dance in the moonlight. That wonderful evening, I have to say, was my most enduring memory of Thera. I’d forgotten about anything else for over forty years.

  All of this was to change. Over a breakfast of honey and rich Greek yoghurt, the hotel owner told us about the extraordinary city that lies beneath modern-day Santorini. It was discovered through the determination of one man, the Greek archaeologist Professor Spyridon Marinatos. The professor already knew Crete very well; so well, in fact, that in the 1930s he had made one of the island’s most significant finds there, at what is known as the Arkalochori cave. At that site, Marinatos found a priceless hoard of ancient bronze goods and weapons, as well as one of the most famous double axes ever discovered on Crete, the impressive bronze votive offering known as the Arkalochori axe. That intrigued me. Bronze weapons must have been highly valuable: why hoard them away?

  For years, Marinatos had entertained a hunch that there would be an ancient town on Santorini, of a similar date to those on Crete. Marinatos was an inspired archaeologist, whose long and exciting career eventually included excavations at world-famous sites such as Marathon and Thermopylae. He also followed Schliemann and others by undertaking research at the Bronze Age city of Mycenae – but discovering Thera was arguably Marinatos’ most inspired moment.

  It was a chance observation that led to Marinatos’ extraordinary discovery. Convention had it that it was an earthquake that had destroyed Crete’s palaces and towns. Yet one day, when the pro- fessor was excavating a villa, he realised that the entire interior of the house was filled with volcanic pumice. No earthquake could have done that. He was digging at Amnisos, a Minoan port town due north of Knossos, which lies due south of ancient Thera and its volcano. Looking with new eyes, Marinatos could also see that blocks of stone had been dragged apart, as if by a huge body of water: the pumice, meanwhile, was mixed with beach sand, as if everything had been thrown up in the air together. The prevailing earthquake theory must, he thought, be flawed. Looking at the crumbling archaeological material in his hands, Marinatos saw a tale of violence and destruction, but not the sort caused by an earthquake. This kind of devastation, he thought, must have come from the sea.

  It also seemed to him that the villa and the surrounding ancient Minoan town had both been destroyed in the course of a few minutes, suffering a sudden and catastrophic fate that was directly comparable with the disaster that had befallen the ancient city of Pompeii. The Roman city had been buried by Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, a volcano so powerful that when it erupts large areas of southern Europe are choked with suffocating layers of ash.

  Aware that there had been an almighty volcanic eruption on Santorini/Thera c.1450 BC, the archaeologist’s gut instinct told him that something significant – and something from the same era as Knossos – could be buried there. It took him decades, but finally he started a dig just outside the modern town of Akrotiri, where we were now staying. His patience was rewarded almost straight away when, helped by the advice of a local man who knew the fields, he struck archaeological gold.

  Burrowing through many feet of volcanic pumice is a tricky job – and back-breaking work. But not for Marinatos, apparently. It was as if he were a man possessed. He chose the exact right spot, a place where the hardened layer of volcanic pumice thinned to about 5 metres. Like Schliemann at ancient Troy, his hunch had proven itself to be 100 per cent correct. He had discovered an abandoned city.

  After breakfast we sat on a sunny wall and read what the dig director, Professor Christos Doumas, had to say about the volcano and the island of Santorini. At one stage the island was called Strongili, ‘The Round One’, but volcanic eruptions have turned its former round, bun-like shape into a croissant. Much later in history, the conquering armies of ancient Sparta gave the crescent of islands the name Thera. According to Professor Doumas:

  . . . In the last 400,000 years there have been more than 100 eruptions on this island, each adding a new layer of earth and rock, slowly making the island bigger.
The last of these truly catastrophic eruptions came 3,600 years ago. . . .

  As we read on, we realised that there was a true miracle – and that Marinatos had found an entire lost city – right beneath our feet. It dated back to at least 1450 BC, the year it’s thought that the volcano erupted. Logically, that ancient city, now buried under mounds of volcanic ash, must have existed at roughly the same time as the palace of Phaestos. This was astounding: two such urbane societies no more than 120 miles (195 kilometres) from one another and thriving during an age we had regarded as plain ‘prehistoric’.

  At this stage, we were strictly tourists – I had no plan to write about Crete, or for that matter Thera; our interest was the pure enjoyment of an ancient enigma. Sadly, today’s crowds of eager tourists can’t visit the ruins of the underground world that Marinatos saw. Less than a third of the archaeological site has been excavated and the site is still dangerous, given the risk of falls. But we knew from our hotel owner that some of the frescoes unearthed so far have been restored and are in the town museum. We sauntered in the next morning to see them. After that moment, all research for my current book would be abandoned, as fascination with this ancient puzzle grew and gripped me.

  The frescoes that had been buried beneath the lava-drowned island of Thera are painted as if drawn from life. Brilliantly coloured, delicate and remarkably lifelike, they show a fertile island rich with plants and wildlife. There were people in this ancient painted paradise: beautiful people, who had lived a life of luxury. We had both assumed that 3,000 years ago life was a matter of pure survival, not of fun.

  When you think of the Bronze Age you tend to imagine grunting ‘prehistoric’ men and women living in caves, wearing animal skins, clubbing one another and going generally unwashed. Yet here, at the very centre of the Mediterranean Sea, was a glittering and highly advanced society. There was nothing cave-man-like about it, even with the idea of bull worship. In fact it looked wonderful. The people in the frescoes were striking, to say the least. Women had tight uplifting bodices, slit to the waist to reveal their breasts, like those on the frescoes at Knossos. The men were athletic, long-limbed and handsome and both men and women wore jewellery – lots of it, from earrings and armbands to necklaces. As on Crete, living standards were precocious: the Therans had fountains, flush toilets and bathtubs. The red, white and black stone houses stacked neatly against the ancient hillsides seemed almost better built and certainly more finely decorated than our flimsy modern ‘little boxes’.

  Who were these ancient Therans, we wondered? And why did their frescoes remind us so much of the murals on Crete? Noticing a huge pithos, or storage jar, that looked just like those we’d seen at Phaestos, I began to realise that Thera must have had a strong connection to the Minoans. Thousands of shards of fine Cretan-style ceramics have been found here, of what experts call ‘the highest palatial quality’ – used, they think, in rituals.1

  Was this civilisation, too, Minoan? Even to my untutored gaze, there were strong similarities in the culture, art and architecture of Thera and Crete. Just like the Minoans on Crete, the people of Thera had a taste for spectacle, for music, for festivals and for fun. There were both cultural and spiritual connections. Here, too, the bull was a creature of cult worship and their worship of female gods was as striking as that of the Minoans. The very word ‘Crete’, etymologists say, has links to today’s Greek term, ‘strong goddess’. It seems that at Knossos each king, or ‘Minos’, married the moon-priestess.2 At Phaestos and Knossos, women were as athletic as men: in a famous painting of athletes somersaulting over a bull, two girls are holding the bull. Here, too, women were portrayed as important, possibly even ruling figures.

  We moved on to the next series of frescoes. The prehistoric paintings on walls, floors and vases were stunning: flowing, filled with colour and life. What was more, the beautifully drawn, lavishly coloured pictures were stylistically just like the highly realistic images we had seen on Crete: two young boys boxing; girls collecting saffron from flowers; a teenage boy carrying fish. The murals gave us an incredibly vivid picture of daily life: bulls chasing onlookers; swifts swooping through the sky; butterflies darting between fruit blossoms. We looked closer. There were more exotic images: lions leaping on deer; a herd of delicate oryx poised to flee. The wall paintings show animals foreign to Thera – African lions and monkeys, Arabian oryx. Where did these exotic influences come from? A tobacco beetle indigenous to America has even been found buried in pre-1450 BC volcanic ash.

  As we moved on through the exhibition, we saw that it wasn’t just the art on Thera that reminded us of ancient Crete. The link between the people of the two islands must have been remarkably close. Many of the ordinary domestic objects in the museum were exact copies of what we had found on Crete. Ah, you might say, a soup bowl is a soup bowl, in whatever country. Everyday objects are similar because they have the same function. But the experts specialising in both art and archaeology see a connection too: they even talk about the development of a ‘kitchen kit’ that became standard here – and on the other islands round about.3

  While their artistic styles seemed remarkably similar, the resemblance between the societies’ basic artefacts, such as fastenings and pins, was striking. To our eyes at least, the Therans’ achievements in architecture and engineering were almost carbon copies of what we’d found on the larger island. As in Crete, some of the fine, ashlar-faced houses on Thera were three-storey mansions. Meanwhile, the scale and sophistication of the Bronze Age metals technology on Thera was, as on Crete, astounding.

  At all three sites – Knossos, Phaestos and, as it now looked to my eyes, on ancient Thera – there had been marble-floored palaces of incredible luxury. Space, light, freedom: this was not what we normally regard as prehistoric living – this was hot and cold running heaven. The distinctive architectural features of ancient Crete – the light-wells, terraces, central courts, sunken baths and terraced and porticoed gardens – were here too. The open verandas and grand staircases must have made life on this already warm and welcoming island gracious and comfortable. They had fresh, running water, both hot and cold, and they even had a form of air conditioning.

  According to one expert, Malcolm H. Wiener:

  When all of the categories of evidence are considered together in the context of Minoan power, wealth, population, trade networks and neopalatial expansion both within Crete and abroad, a major presence of Minoans and descendants of Minoans on Thera seems certain. They may have begun to arrive as individuals or an enclave in the protopalatial period, their number growing subsequently through further immigration and intermarriage.4

  Still, I didn’t have time fully to take in the startling implications of this idea. Because the most amazing fresco of all lay ahead of us. As we entered the room devoted to the West House, Room 5, Marcella and I could hardly believe the evidence of our eyes.

  A fleet of ships was just returning to harbour. Preserved for thousands of years beneath mounds of volcanic tufa, the images of the homecoming flotilla were largely intact and the colours as warm and glowing as if they’d been painted just a few days before.

  Shouting to their friends, teenage boys rush through the town gate, along a narrow strip of land between the sea and the town walls. Women – perhaps mothers and wives, one lady with her young boy next to her – peek out of windows and balconies. Fishermen clamber up the slope from the beach, trying to reach the top of the hill and get the first view of the fleet already filling the harbour. The homecoming of the fleet is the climactic end of a story. What was the full story, I wondered? To view the magnificient Thera flotilla fresco please go to the first colour plate section.

  Before us was what amounted to a stolen moment in time: a snapshot of an entire Bronze Age fleet, looking just as it did when it sailed into harbour 3,500 years ago. These must be by far the oldest images of European ships in existence, I thought.

  Thinking about the ships took me straight back to Phaestos. Urgently, I scrabbled back
through the guidebook. Minoan pottery – particularly the extraordinary black, cream and orange pots known as Kamares ware – has been found in various Egyptian excavation sites dated as early as Egypt’s 12th Dynasty.

  The Minoan pottery must have been transported to Egypt in ships like these, pictured right in front of us. These frescoes had been on the walls of an astonishing mansion found by Marinatos. The excavators thought the house had belonged to an admiral. If the Minoans had really possessed a well-developed naval command structure, to the extent of having ranks and leaders, then just how well travelled must they have been? Could a Bronze Age people of 2700 to 1400 BC really have constructed the world’s first ocean-going vessels, loaded them with precious goods and started plying the world’s first international trading routes? What if the centres of Knossos, Phaestos and Thera, island paradises separated only by a few short miles of sea, had been the central hubs of a much bigger sailing nation?

  THE FLEET FRESCO: POSITION OF THE SHIPS

  These beautiful paintings, known as the ‘Miniature Frescoes’, show a spectacular procession of vessels moving between two harbour towns. The ships have figureheads at their prows: they look as if they are carved and painted as leopards and lions, but this could be the actual animal skins. There are garlands draped around these victorious ships, and the townsfolk are excited and jubilant. Every detail is so real and lifelike that I began to speculate that they were real; that they were a historical record, and that therefore, it could be possible to find the actual harbours they depict.

  I spent 10 years as a navigator and then Captain of submarines, taking periscope photographs and making maps from them. I applied that knowledge to the area of coast west of Akrotiri (on Santorini).