The Lost Empire of Atlantis Page 4
Linking the Fresco to the coast
The map based on Imray chart G33 has been marked, to show
A. Red Beach.
B. The protruding cape at the East of Red Beach.
C. The high hill behind Red Beach.
D. Two roads leading inland from Cape B. E. Three roads leading inland to the Base (now being excavated).
F. The excavations at Akrotiri.
The map has been ‘anchored’ on the lighthouse at 36o21’30”N and 25021’30”E.
Tying the ships on the fresco to the coastline The fresco is drawn in 3 tiers – tier 3 can be ignored as it is a river. The top tier shows the western part of the coast with ships 1–5. The middle tier shows ships 6–11 crossing the bay to reach harbour. The ships are numbered on the Imray chart.
Everything now becomes clear. The fleet sighted the high hill behind Red Beach (C) 30 miles out in the Mediterranean and steered towards it. When they reached shallow water they turned eastwards for home. Ships 10 and 11 are shown in harbour, ships 2 to 9 en route to home.
Note: the Anchorage signs are shown on the Imray chart. The harbour was presumably chosen (F) because deep water reaches there (7m3).
Position of ships shown on the Fleet Fresco
All ships are proceeding in formation astern (Form 1) on an easterly course.
Ship 1 Shown in front of the harbour once excavated from in the cliffs at Red Beach (A).
Ship 2 Inshore of ship 1 and opposite the protruding cape at the eastern edge of Red Beach (B).
Ship 3 Inshore of ship 2 in the bay marked on my plan. We know the ship is in the bay because of dolphins inshore of the ship.
Ship 4 To the east of ship 2 and further to seaward of ship 3 – in the bay (because it depicts dolphins inshore of it).
Ship 5 East of ship 3 and in the bay (dolphins).
Ship 6 Well to seaward. Still has sail rigging.
Ship 7 In the bay.
Ship 8 & 9 Just approaching Akrotiri i.e. the main base currently being excavated Ship 10 & 11 Berthed in harbour.
Ship 12, 13, 14 Possibly berthed, but too indistinct on the fresco to be sure.
The positions of ships 10 and 11 coincide with the point where deep water reaches the shore. This area has yet to be excavated. I believe when excavated it will show a stone-lined channel leading to a quay in the area to the west of the steps leading to the Admiral’s house.
If the Minoans had mastered the supreme skill of shipbuilding they could have spread their growing influence by sailing these very same ships that were depicted in front of us now. The idea of a trading fleet or even a naval power made absolute sense: nothing less would fuel the sophistication and glamour of the Minoan culture, whose richness could still be seen on these walls. Nothing other than thriving international trade could have provided the extreme luxury and wealth which these people had obviously enjoyed.
To my eyes, it certainly seemed possible: at least three of the eight vessels in the ‘admiral’s fresco’ looked as if they could cross an ocean. There is so much realistic information on the frieze that you can even see the number of oars they had, work out the type and efficiency of the sails and estimate the sailing capacity of the ships. The size of one particular ship with a stern cabin suggests that it was the admiral’s flagship – which explains its prominent position on the walls of his beautiful house.
Thousands of years ago, Room 5 was probably once a graceful reception room. Before disaster struck, it had had picture windows overlooking the sea and an impressive, wide staircase. I decided to rename Room 5 ‘the ballroom’, as an aide mémoire. You can imagine the scene: men and women celebrating an arrival, a victory, or some very special occasion. The admiral’s guests are admiring the fleet as shown on the fresco while they gather for drinks at dusk, before dinner. Perhaps they could see the real-life ships sitting at anchor in the bay below them, home after a long, adventurous voyage.
The superb fresco ran along the top of all four walls of the ballroom. Once in the room, guests would have been able to read the story of a voyage to distant and exotic lands – moving anticlockwise, rather than our habitual left to right – and the sailors’ victorious return to their home port, where the ships are joyfully greeted by the heroes’ families and by the townspeople of Thera.
This was extraordinary, like diving through a porthole into a lost age. By pure chance I was on the trail of an untold and long-forgotten story. I began taking notes. The length, width and draught of the ships – and hence their seagoing capability – can be easily calculated, as well as the weight and volume of the cargo which could be carried. In short, the frescoes might even be able to tell us how far the ships could have sailed and in what weather.
To start analysing all this, I numbered each ship, starting with one on the far left and ending with 9, 10 and 11 – seen on the right-hand side of the picture, nearest to the admiral’s house. The ships varied in size. Numbers 4, 5, 7 and 8 are the longest, and 5 and 8 have the largest number of oars: twenty-six a side. Number 6 has the most sophisticated sailing capability.
In fact, excavated Minoan seals5 show that their ships had significant sophistication, including masts and sails, from at least 3000 BC. Inscribed clay roundels found at Chania, on the western coast of Crete, show the same symbolism for ships as the frescoes did – a hooked prow, a kind of cabin astern.
The small ‘cabins’ on numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 8 were in fact awnings, to shade passengers from the fierce sun beating down on them at sea. They look much like the decorated pavilions that knights in medieval Europe took to war. Amazingly, the remains of one of these cloth coverings had actually been found on the excavation – complete with the manorial arms and crests of a captain and an admiral. Yet more evidence of a highly controlled and well-planned naval infrastructure. The cabin was portable, as were the central square awnings. When they were at sail, the ships would have looked most like ship number 6 – which is dominated by a large, square-rigged sail on a central mast.
Ship number 6, I decided, was the most interesting. It had ten guy ropes controlling the sails: sailors call them sheets.
Using the sheets, a sailor could lower and hoist sails; reduce sail area (by furling); and alter the shape of the sail to get maximum forward thrust. The ropes were controlled using a brass adjuster at the masthead; I later found an early example of a similar system in a museum in Athens. This system of ten ropes allowed you to adjust the sail to maximise sail-power in any wind – full sail mounted crosswise when in light stern winds; lightly furled sail with the curvature narrowed when sailing into the wind; completely furled sail in a squall or in no wind, when the oarsmen could take over.
Each oarsman would need a space of at least 76 centimetres (2 feet 6 inches) in which to row, but 91 centimetres (3 feet) was comfortable and 107 centimetres (3 feet 6 inches) allowed for fast rowing. So twenty-six rowers needed a distance of 24 metres (78 feet) – ships 5 and 8. The oarsmen occupied half of the length of the ship, from the stern to the end of the prow, so this would make the ship 47.5 metres (156 feet) long, with a hull length of about 36.5 metres (120 feet). These were big seagoing ships, about the same size as the Golden Hind Sir Francis Drake sailed in Elizabethan times.
Thoroughly transfixed, I examined the fresco more closely. The vessels have several unique features, as far as I know. The first is the projection at the rear shown in ships 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8.
I thought the strange projections could only be hydroplanes, similar to submarine hydroplanes at the stern of a submarine. Stern hydroplanes are horizontal rudders. They adjust the position of the stern. The one on ship 8 would raise the stern and hence lower the bow, altering the configuration of the ship. In a stern sea, or following wind, it could be used in this position; in a head sea or wind it would be reversed, to lower the stern and raise the bow. You could probably shift the crew forward and aft to achieve the same result.
The ships shared another unique feature in this scene. You can see some ‘lighter than air’ objects floa
ting above the bows of ships 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8. Close up, these objects must have put considerable upward force on the bows, because they are attached to the bowsprit by a thick piece of solid wood. It would seem that these vertical ‘hoists’ complemented the stern hydroplanes, giving additional lift when the hydroplanes helped to lower the stern (the hydroplanes are reversed from their position in ship 8). How these vertical hoists worked is a complete mystery to me – but I can think of no other explanation for them being there. Mere decorations would not have needed to be secured to the bowsprit with such thick wood.
As far as I know, these two features are unique to Minoan ships.
The third unique aspect of this fleet is aesthetic: the beautiful paintings on the sides of the hull. Ship 5 has lions and dragons; ship 6 sports doves. These extremely sophisticated ocean-going ships were capable of sailing in most weather conditions and were able to adjust both sail and hull configuration. What technology! And just like the airlines or train companies of today – such as BA or Virgin Atlantic – the Minoans branded their beautiful, world-beating ships with their own unique identity, born of their extraordinary talent in the fine arts.
CHAPTER 3
THE SEARCH FOR THE
MINOAN NAVAL BASE
I needed to see for myself if Thera had once had a harbour deep enough for seagoing ships. Where would an ‘Admiralty House’ be built in relation to this harbour? Having visited naval houses all over the world, I know admirals often wish to live near their principal port, so they can greet ships when they return and entertain captains, officers and men. As a symbol of status, ‘Admiralty House’ is almost always built on a hill overlooking the port, like Mount Wise near Plymouth.
We needed to narrow the search. Any captain or admiral choosing a harbour would require shelter from the prevailing wind and sea. The prevailing wind on Thera is our old friend the Meltemi, known by the ancient Greeks as the Etesian winds. The system results from the high pressure system (>1025) frequently lying over Hungary and the Balkans and the relatively low pressure system (<1010) over Turkey.
This helped me pinpoint our search. The port would almost certainly have been built on a southern shore – either between Cape Agios Nikolaos and the foot of Mount Prophet Elias (see map), or on the south coast between Cape Akrotiri and Vlichada.
The ballroom frescoes show the land falling away to the sea, in a dramatic panorama of the coastline. My guidebook included reconstructions of maps of the coastline as it would have been in 1600 BC. The beach extended about 300 metres (980 feet) further to seaward than today, but the shape of the coastline remained broadly the same: though the admiral would have seen rather more of the coast and its anchorage than he could today.
Thanks to millennia of volcanic activity, Santorini must be one of the few places in the world that has beaches in three colours – with white, red and black sand. This headland has the strangest coastline I have ever seen. One of the beaches is called Kokkini, or Red Beach – and indeed everything is red, from the terracottacoloured cliffs, the red sand and red pebbles to the sometimes red tourists, in places. But the water is deep, cool and crystal clear, shading from aquamarine through turquoise to cobalt and then black.
Thinking about it on a practical level, as a seaman, the most likely place for a port would be between Red Beach, 1,000 metres (3,300 feet) west of where the admiral’s house was excavated, and White Beach, which is 2,000 metres (6,600 feet) further west.
Then it suddenly struck me – imagine if the admiral’s guests were actually able to see the ships: not just on the fresco, but at sea? Supposing the painter of the frescoes was in fact painting the fleet just as it was – moored right in front of the admiral’s house? It made perfect sense. Immediately we decided to sail out along the short stretch of coast that looked like the scene in the fresco. We racketed around the harbour until we found someone with a boat and then we set off, the wind in our faces and camera at the ready.
In 1600 BC there were a number of volcanoes affecting this island: La Thirasia, Megalo Vouno, and Mikros Prophet Elias, in the north. These would rule out a base on the sheltered north coast of the island. The port must have been on the south coast.
The sailors would want to be as far away from danger as possible – and all the evidence so far is that this strategy worked. No shipwrecks caused by the volcano have yet been found.
This was a trip to remember: the salt spray flying high as the cutter bounced and plunged its way along the spectacular coastline. The next major requirement of a port is for drinking water, from streams or rivers entering the sea, to stock ships before a voyage. On the south coast between White Beach and Vlichada, I counted thirteen streams. That would be why the merchants had chosen Akrotiri as the main port – to service the fleet’s need for water.
We trained our telescopes and zoom lenses on the red cliffs behind the beach. As I framed the image in the lens, the link became unmistakable. Even today, the contours of the land match up with the fresco. The long-buried image Marinatos had uncovered wasn’t just a pretty picture: it is in effect a map. You can see the three peaks of the island quite clearly. The only major difference is the shape of a central waterway, at the middle of the fresco.
On the right-hand side of the fresco were the houses now being excavated, not least the admiral’s mansion. A broad stairway is shown leading up from the beach to the house. Then, proceeding westwards, tracking left across the painting, you can see a large building with triangular windows: it might have been a type of barracks, interesting to us as we look for evidence of a well-manned fleet, or, less helpfully, a prison. The site has yet to be excavated.
Tracing a line further west along the image of the fleet and the harbour we had in the guidebook, we came to the distinctive, pyramid-shaped hill behind Red Beach.
What we also saw from seaward, to our surprise, was a series of caves along the base of the red cliffs, one or two of them looking as if they were inhabited. We waded ashore to discover that this whole stretch of coast has a string of such caverns, carved out of the volcanic tephra. Later, at the hotel, Spiros the owner told us his grandfather still keeps his fishing boats in such a cave and that many people live in what’s known as skaptas; long houses carved out of the tephra. They are easy enough to dig, but strong enough not to collapse. Many of them have been turned into restaurants. Starving, and with just a touch of sun and sea burn, we dined in ‘Cave Nicholas’ that evening, a cavernous room dug 12 metres (40 feet) into the cliffs, which yielded an excellent fish dinner.
Finding an entire lost city – many thousands of years old – was simply breathtaking. The drama of the story, along with the suddenness of ancient Thera’s disappearance and its equally sudden discovery, has led many people to speculate that this was the long-lost civilisation of ‘Atlantis’. I knew the tale well: it was a highly popular story when I was younger. A fabulous city had been suddenly drowned underneath the sea. This was the gods’ punishment, apparently, for its people’s arrogance and hubris. I just dismissed this idea as nonsense. There was huge drama to Thera’s destruction, true. It was terribly poignant that at the very height of its brilliance this civilisation’s bright flame had been extinguished in a moment. Yet this wasn’t a tragedy on the scale of Pompeii, it seemed. The archaeologists were convinced that most of Thera’s citizens had escaped the ravages of the volcano. During Marinatos’ excavations no actual bodies were found and there are many signs of preparation for the disaster: expressive details, such as food storage jars being left with a covering to protect against roof falls. Most valuables appear to have been removed, suggesting that the people of Thera had been given plenty of time in which to prepare for their escape from the volcano.
The idea of a lost civilisation is fascinating, but in the case of ‘Atlantis’ the whole concept has become the province of crackpots and charlatans. This puzzling story, and the enigma behind it, has inspired everything from poetry and science fiction to Hollywood films. Where was Atlantis? No one knew, but lot
s of people had an opinion. Everyone, from the 1920s occultist Rudolf Steiner to SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, embroidered upon the myth. The Atlanteans have become all things to all men, accused of being anything from a race of Nordic supermen to intergalactic spacemen. Three thousand years ago . . . it was astonishing to think of being plunged so far back in time that there were no books, no libraries, no contemporary written records – or at least ones that we could understand. As we read in one of our guidebooks, the only early record of Atlantis was a word of mouth account. It was later picked up and written down by a certain young Greek philosopher who was writing a theoretical ‘dialogue’, the details of which may or may not be true. It stretched my credulity that Plato’s voice, reaching out over the wine-dark seas of time, could possibly hold any truth.
In a single day and night of misfortune, all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared – into the depths of the sea.6
Plato’s original texts, which had caused all the furore about the mysterious land of Atlantis, were in fact two ‘dialogues’ called Timaeus and Critias. Born 423/427 BC, Plato was the second among a great trio of ancient Greek philosophers, along with Socrates and Aristotle. Timaeus is concerned with the creation of the universe. Critias is incomplete, breaking off suddenly in the passage which concerns Atlantis.
Translations of the texts seemed to suggest that the ancient metropolis and the Royal City were separate entities, which I could see had a strong resemblance to the relationship between Crete and Thera. The main city, he said, lay on a circular island about 12 miles (19 kilometres) wide. The Royal City, meanwhile, was situated on a rectangular-shaped island. So Plato’s Atlantis was certainly two islands and possibly more. There are plenty of islands to choose from in the Med. Yet given that Plato was writing a morality tale, it didn’t necessarily follow that the details of his fable had to be true. His motive was not to tell future generations about Atlantis; his concern was to discuss philosophy and the failings of human nature. But his account was striking.