The Lost Empire of Atlantis Page 8

  For hour after hour we roared across this great plateau, heading for Bogazköy, 125 miles (200 kilometres) east of Ankara, which thousands of years ago had been the centre of the Hittite civilisation. I knew that name from the Bible: some of King David’s most valued soldiers had been Hittites, although I’d never before troubled to find out exactly what that meant. In Bogazköy’s museum I found seals with merchants’ signatures, dating from 4000 BC. Arrows, axe heads and jewellery fill the rest of the museum.

  Bogazköy is a higgledy-piggledy town with red pantile roofs and an antiquated dolmus bus that won’t leave the square until it is totally full. This is where some of the very first Minoans may have come from. But then, you’d need a scorecard to keep track of all the peoples and cultures that have passed this way. The estimate is that the people whose arrival so transformed Neolithic Crete would have left this region around 100,000 BC.

  The former Hittite capital of Hattuşa rises rather accusingly from the top of a huge crag, high above the present-day village. A hot walk up a tarmac road reveals an imposing lion gate but little else other than the rubble and footings of a ruined acropolis. The lions look strangely like puppies; obviously sculpted by someone who had never had the opportunity to study the beasts at first hand.

  At its peak c.1344–1322 BC, this great palace was protected by 4 miles (6 kilometres) of stone walls. Now it looks about ready to turn back into dust.

  To my right, as I walked through the ruins, was the outline of the oldest-known library ever to have existed. It is now nothing more than a few dents in the ground. I scrolled my toe through the dust and earth. Archaeologists tell us that all those years ago the cuneiform tablets stood on end in rows, like modern books on a shelf. There were even indexes, also marked out in the baked clay, telling you what was inside each stack of ‘books’: for instance, a label saying ‘Thirty-two tablets concerning the Purulli festival of the city of Nerik’.

  I wondered what it would have been like to go to a Purulli festival. Purulli was a storm god so I thought of the British music festivals, so often plagued by rain. Quite some way off from Glaston-bury, I suppose, but maybe not radically different – all that mud and all those brollies.

  I was glad, then, that I’d gulped down my coffee and headed for the airport. A whole new way of investigating the Minoans’ past had now opened up to me: through DNA.

  The Hittites must have been a formidable people. They signed peace treaties with Egyptian pharaohs and Assyrian kings. They also conquered Babylon and were a well-ordered society, worshipping many deities, including, I noticed, a female god – Hepatu, the sun goddess. I didn’t know for certain whether that was a direct link to the powerful goddesses of Knossos, but it felt right. Just to the south of here, on the Konya plain, is Çatalhöyük, known as the world’s first major human settlement, of c. 7500 BC to 5700 BC.

  Turkey not only straddles two continents, it seems. It straddles time itself.

  What was the link to ancient Crete and to the Minoan civilisation that once flourished there? Very early settlers to Crete introduced cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and dogs, as well as vegetables and cereals. The earliest communities grew up around the coast on the eastern and southern parts of the island. Yet something appears to have happened to Crete and its culture after 7000 BC – something momentous. People suddenly learned advanced practices in agriculture. They developed pot-making, and metalwork. Next, quite suddenly, came an incredible period of palace development. How did such amazing sophistication appear so suddenly?

  Boning up on the research I’d first read about in the newspaper report, I discovered that the DNA haplogroups J2a1h-M319 (8.8 per cent) and J2a1b1-M92 (2.6 per cent) linked the Minoans to a Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age migration to Crete no later than 100,000 BC. Specifically, genetic researchers connected the source population of ancient Crete to the well-known Neolithic sites of ancient Anatolia, not too far away from my present location – such as Asýklý Höyük, Çatalhöyük, and Hacýlar. That made the blood surge a little faster. If researchers could find and track an ancient DNA link to Crete from the region I was now visiting, then perhaps I could follow the Minoans – via their DNA – to some of the other places I suspected they’d been. And in so doing reinforce my notion that they’d been the most important international trading culture of their age. And as such a key defining force in global history.

  All human beings carry DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) in every single cell of their bodies. Each cell contains 46 chromosomes, which cluster in pairs: half derive from your mother and half from your father. Chromosomes contain tightly coiled DNA, divided into sections known as genes. Genes tell the cells what proteins to make. The proteins, in turn, control everything that happens in your body when it comes to identity and growth: for example, one protein might make your eye pigment, others might decide the size and shape of your teeth.

  The paired DNA strands wrap around one another to make a double helix. Each person has their own unique genetic fingerprint. It is unlike the DNA of anyone else, but there is a useful rider to that. While women have two X chromosomes, men have one X and one Y. The Y chromosome is always passed down the male line from father to son. That unique factor makes the Y-line virtually like a surname: it is transmitted, almost intact, down the male line from generation to generation.

  The Y chromosome is altered only by rare spontaneous mutations. These mutations can be used to identify sequences of the Y chromosome, known as haplogroups. Being no expert in DNA, I had to do a bit of reading up here. The word ‘haplogroup’ comes from the Greek and means single, or simple. Haplogroups reveal deep ancestral origins dating back thousands of years. Males with the same haplogroup must have shared a common male ancestor in the past. This was intriguing, because according to what I was now learning other great peoples, such as the Etruscans, seemed to share some common ancestry with the Hittites of Anatolia. Haplo-groups also incorporate smaller Y-DNA sequences know as haplo-types – groups of genes that share a common ancestor. Thanks to the work of the Human Genome Project, many of these have been identified and given codenames, e.g. J2a-M410.

  It was Professor Constantinos Triantafyllidis of Thessaloniki’s Aristotle University who had released details of the research and it was his comment that had launched me from my lukewarm morning coffee to a blasting hot plain in central Turkey. According to his initial findings, today’s Cretan population was genetically intermingled with yesterday’s people of Anatolia. Professor Triantafyllidis believes the arrival of these people had coincided with a social and cultural upsurge. It led, around 7000 BC, to the birth of Europe’s first advanced civilisation.

  I remembered very clearly one surprising image imprinted on the Phaestos Disc. It was of a man wearing a striking feather headdress. My trip to Turkey had confirmed my suspicion: during the Bronze Age, such warlike headgear was worn by the Lycians of Anatolia.

  NOTES TO BOOK I

  1. Marthari personal communication; S. Marinatos 1974, 31 and Pl. 67b and d; C. Doumas. C., in Thera and the Ancient World, 1983, p. 43

  2. Rodney Castleden, Minoans: Life in Bronze Age Crete, Taylor and Francis, 2007

  3. M. H. Wiener, Thera and the Aegean World III, vol. 1, Archaeology, Proceedings of the Third International Congress, Santorini, Greece, 3–9 September 1989, p. 128

  4. Ibid

  5. Papapostolou, L, Godart and J. P. Olivier, pp. 146–7, Roundels among Minoan seals (2009)

  6. Plato, Timaeus, trans. Robin Waterfield. Oxford World Classics, 2008

  7. Ibid

  8. J. Boardman & colleagues, ‘The Olive in the Mediterranean: Its Culture and Use’, Royal Society Publishing, vol. 275, No.936, JSTOR

  9. Ibid

  10. Ventris and Chadwick, The Decipherment of Linear B, Cambridge University Press, 1958

  11. Shaw, B. D., The Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge University Press, 1984

  12. Stylianos, Alexiou, Minoan Civilisation, Spyros Alexiou Sons; First Edition (1969)

  13. Br
uins, MacGillivray, Synolakis, Benjamini, Keller, Kisch, Klugel, and van der Plicht, ‘Geoarchaeological tsunami deposits at Palaikastro (Crete) and the Late Minoan IA eruption of Santorini’, Journal of Archaeological Science 2008, 35, pp. 191–212

  14. Joseph Shaw (www.fineart.utoronto.ca/kommos/kommosintroduction)

  15. Thucydides 1.41. trans. Benjamin Jowett. Oxford, 1900

  16. Bernard Knapp, ‘Thalassocracies in Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean Trade: making and breaking a myth’, in World Archaeology, vol. 24, No.3, Ancient Trade: New Perspectives, 1993

  17. Thucydides 1.9.1,3

  18. Stylianos Alexiou, Minoan Civilization, trans. C. Ridley. Heraklion Museum, 1969

  19. Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: Complete Edition, Penguin, 1993

  20. Stylianos Alexiou, Minoan Civilization

  21. Herodotus, Histories. trans. George Rawlinson, Penguin Classics, 1858

  22. Sandars 1963, p. 117; Popham et al. 1974, p. 252; Driessen and Macdonald 1984, pp. 49–74, 152 in "The Isles of Crete? The Minoan Thalassocracy Revisited, The Thera Foundation (www.therafoundation.org)

  23. Sinclair Hood, in Archaeology: the Minoans of America, vol. 74, 1972

  24. Constantinos Triantafyllidis, Aristotle University, Thessaloniki

  BOOK II

  EXPLORATION

  VOYAGES TO THE

  NEAR EAST

  CHAPTER 8

  THE LOST WRECK AND THE

  BURIED TREASURE TROVE

  By now I was becoming convinced the Minoans were the forebears of the mythic heroes who sailed to Troy: Agamemnon, Achilles, Odysseus et al. But without any actual physical evidence of the kinds of ships they would have sailed, I feared that the trail had run out. Then one night I heard about a wreck dating from c.1305 BC that had been found on the seabed of the nearby Turkish coast – a discovery which, to a former sailor like me, counts as one of the greatest archaeological finds ever made.

  In sea terms Uluburun, a promontory off the coast south of Bodrum, is quite close to Thera. Significantly for me, it is in exactly the zone – western Anatolia – that Bernard Knapp had described as being under the control of the Minoan empire. In Turkish the term ‘Uluburun’ simply means a rocky plinth of land; but the reef below it, like all reefs, is treacherous in bad weather.

  I arrived at nearby Bodrum early in the morning, having spent an uncomfortable night chugging along the Aegean on yet another ferry. To get here, we puffed in the opposite direction from the beautiful Sea of Marmara and the teeming, anarchic sights of Istanbul. A litter of rocky islands stood in our way; as we puttered forward, I thought you’d have had to be a pretty good navigator just to travel north–south across the Aegean Sea.

  We awoke to a fresh wind and the unmistakable bustle of a boat nearing port. I rushed out on deck in the sharp air of the early morning to catch my first glimpse of coastal Turkey for more than twenty years. Purple hills, deep grey-green olive groves, the azure sea and the romance of the deep past: I breathed it all in.

  Excitement made my skin prickle. I could be on the threshold of a real breakthrough in my quest to uncover the truth behind the explorers and the seafarers of the ancient world – today at the town museum I’d get my first view of the oldest-known shipwreck in the world.

  Bodrum is more or less the home of history; at least, it was home to the world’s first superstar historian, Herodotus. The town’s ancient name was Halicarnassus and its walls once encircled a mausoleum that was one of the famed seven wonders of the ancient world. It was such a pleasure to be here and breathe it all in; you can still trace the ancient walls that once embraced nearly the entire town. Bodrum Castle, now the Museum of Underwater Archaeology, was built by the Knights of St John in the 15th century. I felt instantly connected to the castle: its five major towers include the English, or Lion, Tower. Colourful rows of huge amphorae are mounted on the entrance wall.

  The Uluburun wreck is the kind of heart-stopping find that archaeologists dream about; one of those discoveries that helps rewrite history. Quite why the boat came to grief – near what is today the pretty little fishing village of Kaş– no one will ever know for sure. The ship foundered a hundred years or so after Thera’s frescoes were painted. Yet this is hardly a blink in time: in the interim, shipbuilding technology would not have changed much at all.

  Poignantly, the wreck held one of ancient history’s most extraordinary finds: the earliest ‘captain’s logbook’. But the captain remains mute, his words – written in soft wax – obliterated by time.

  For centuries the wreck lay quiet, in total obscurity, protected from looters by 45 deep blue metres (150 feet) of silent sea. Then in 1982, thousands of years after its last journey, a sponge diver found it by total accident. We must thank the stars for Mehmet Cakir’s decency and honesty. If it were not for him, some of the world’s greatest treasures could have gone via the black market to unscrupulous dealers. For what Cakir found was a hoard worthy of an Aladdin’s cave – mound upon mound of sunken treasure.

  The ship’s extraordinary cargo could have come from a modern French luxury goods house – except that these opulent objects were much more exotic than even the highest quality champagne. The treasure, found scattered over 250 square metres (300 square yards) of the jagged, rocky seabed, came from as many as ten different Bronze Age nations. The Uluburun ship carried exquisitely wrought gold and silver jewellery and a cornucopia of rich fruits and spices, as well as huge amphorae from the Lebanon; terebinth resin, used to create perfumes; ebony, which had come all the way from Egypt; and all manner of exotic goods like elephant tusks, hippopotamus teeth and ostrich and tortoise shells (see first colour plate section).

  Before you see the ship, the museum guides you through the finds from its hold. The material found in shipwrecks can only be rescued with a huge amount of hard work. Firstly, artefacts are put in vats of water, where they will remain for approximately six to eight years. It takes a minimum of five years, and sometimes up to ten years, just to remove the salt from porous substances. The water is changed every fifteen days, depending on what the gauges indicate. After the salt is removed, the objects are placed in a vat containing polyglycol for a period of four to five years. Every possible care has been taken to save these precious things. It was not difficult to see why.

  The greatest treasure, a prize find worthy of a king, lay at the stern. It was an extraordinary chalice of pure gold. Homer describes the legendary war hero Achilles drinking from a golden goblet just like it:

  Achilles strode back to his shelter now

  and opened the lid of the princely inlaid sea chest

  that glistening-footed Thetis stowed in his ship to carry,

  filled to the brim with war-shirts, windproof cloaks

  and heavy fleecy rugs. And there it rested . . .

  his handsome, well-wrought cup.1

  Achilles’ golden chalice was found nestling on the seabed next to an exotic pendant in the form of a golden falcon, which was clutching a giant cobra in its talons. In the hold was yet more treasure, including a gold scarab bearing the name of the celebrated Egyptian beauty Nefertiti, queen and wife to Akhenaten, the all-powerful pharaoh of Egypt.

  But in many ways I was less interested in all this exotica than in the ‘everyday’ story this traveller could tell us. The ship was a time capsule, speeding us back to the daily life of the Bronze Age: for me, it would be almost as if I were stepping into Doctor Who’s Tardis.

  As I travelled along the solemn line of glass cases, I could see knives and weighing scales – practical tools that had been used by ordinary sailors thousands of years ago. There were many animal-shaped lumps of bronze: deer, cattle. They stood out because they looked like toys, but in the catalogue they were described as weights. The weights used for scales were particularly eye-catching, even charming. There were stone mortars for grinding food and fish hooks to catch it. There was a barbed trident: it made you think of the Roman retiarii, or net and trident fighters – introduced to a much
later Roman empire by Emperor Augustus.

  The retiarius was modelled on a fisherman: the edges of the net he used like a lasso were weighted with lead. Right in front of me were the Bronze Age predecessors of that military innovation; hundreds of net sinkers, the weights that the crew used on the edges of their casting nets. There was also a harpoon – and a set of knucklebones, for playing a game of chance on those long nights at sea, a night’s entertainment lit by the comforting yellow glow of oil lamps. Weapons, too – arms that had been wielded by wizened and ancient hands more than 3,000 years ago.

  Then I reached the last display case. Its contents, for me, were far more valuable than all of the silver and gold, however beautiful. I took a sudden deep breath.

  I was right. What was the wreck’s main cargo? The raw materials for making bronze. They were even in the right proportions: 10 tons of copper and 1 ton of tin.

  This was truly a Bronze Age vessel, made with bronze tools and carrying enough copper and tin to make weapons for an army. There were 121 copper ‘bun’ ingots, together with enough fragments to make another 9, and 354 copper ‘oxhide’ ingots, with an average weight of 23 kilos. Each copper oxhide ingot was about a metre long, with sharp corners. They are called oxhide ingots because their distinctive shape is a bit like the hide of an ox when it has been flayed and stretched. At one time it was thought that they may have represented the value of an ox; now archaeologists think the shape is simply easy to handle.

  I slowed down as I approached the next room. Ahead of me was what I had been looking for: part of the oldest ship I had ever seen. About 15 metres (50 feet) long, her charred timbers were spindly and frail. She may have been ravaged by centuries of seawater, but there was a strength and grace to this boat’s design that made you forget about her current dishevelled state. Here was a ship that could sail like the wind; nimble, responsive and manoeuvrable. There were quite a few other visitors in the room, but the atmosphere was hushed and thoughtful: after all, on this vessel people had struggled for their lives. And lost.