Focus 580; Unearthing Atlantis: An Archaeological Odessey

A very long time ago long before the Golden Age of Greece there was a highly advanced civilization that existed on an island. No one knows exactly where this was some people have said that it was in fact in the Atlantic Ocean but in any case these people were the naval power of their day and they used technology that was equal to maybe even rival to our own. But in the space of a single day and night natural disaster struck and Atlantis slipped beneath the waves and soon thereafter from the memory of humankind. This story as we have it probably owes its origins to Plato who included it in one of his dialogues he claims that it was true although many who came after him believe that he had just made it up. It may be that Plato's story had a factual basis. Sometime around sixteen hundred B.C. a very powerful volcanic eruption devastated the island of Thera north of Crete in the Aegean Sea it was part of the Minoan culture and indeed from the evidence that is now being on earth by archaeologist it was indeed very highly advanced for its

time. We'll be talking this morning about the work that's being done on therapy and whether or not in fact it might be the the seed of the legend which came to be widely circulated by Plato and other people the legend of Atlantis. This morning our guest in this first part of focus 580 is Charles Pellegrino and he has authored a book. Examining this topic His book is entitled unearthing Atlantis an archaeological Odyssey. It is published by Random House. It is one of a number of books which Dr. Pellegrino has written he also has written for Smithsonian omni analog and other popular and professional publications. His interest extend into a number of areas of science archaeology being just one. And he's joining us this morning by phone as we talk you should feel free to pick up the telephone and call in if you have questions or comments. Our telephone number here 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line. That one is going anywhere you can hear us and that is 800 to 2

2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 WRAL and eight hundred 1:58 W. while those are the numbers to call. Dr. Pellegrino Hello. Thanks very much for talking with us today. Tell us what what their looks like today as as you you approach the island by boat as you walk around it what kind of a place is it now. Very much as Plato described it there. Basically what from the air like a broken reed bone which is the outer fringe of the island there had been a one mile high volcano in the center and there there's just a few adder fringes and a crater eight miles across and nearly a quarter mile deep and originally it was more than a half mile deep immediately after the explosion.

And I suppose that's one of the things that that the fact that the way it really looks is much like the way Plato described one of the things that lends some credence to the idea that in fact Plato just didn't make the story up but that he that somehow the story had come down to him. Are there some other ways in which the. The things that Plato has written about his Atlantis do seem to square up well with the place as we are as we know definitely and it's not just a matter of people fitting pieces into a jigsaw puzzle and kind of forcing them into place. Even before geologists learned that there had been an explosion and before Spirit or marinate or the magick to fan the buried city on the earth and buried city dating back to the explosion that happened to be a Minoan city which is the civilization that is believed to be the kernel of truth behind the origin of the Atlantis legend Aki ologist very early in this century

we're digging down on the island of Crete below Greek ruins and they found the ruins of a more advanced civilization below the younger classical Greek civilization. And this struck them immediately that this is exactly what Plato described. An older civilization that had died off for some reason but there had been survivors who carried on the technology and passed it on to what later became the classical Greek civilization. And there were golden cups turning up that were exactly on their side. They had engraving that were exact descriptions of both ceremonies described by Plato and credited to the at what he called the Atlantic and civilization. And more amazing is the cups themselves had been described by Plato with the same bowl ceremonies described on the sides. So it was people very early about 1000 No.6. Researcher by the name of

Katie frost had written that this could be the origin of the Atlantis legend. The one major thing that didn't quite fit the Play-Doh tale was that this older civilization had not died by some kind of volcanic eruption earth thinking as far as they could tell in 1906 and they felt that maybe there'd been some sort of massive economic collapse there at the eastern Mediterranean and that the civilization had vanished suddenly as if a lost Atlantis. And now we know that there was this tremendous. Actually the most tremendous ecological disaster that humans have ever seen up to the one that we just about developing the capability of creating man. The descriptions of this volcanic eruption are. It sort of boggles the mind to try to think about just how

how the size of the explosion for example you write in the book that the as this volcano exploded there exploded with the force of a hundred and fifty hydrogen bombs really going off and at the same at the same instant it was truly global only then to be a man to die cast up into the upper atmosphere was such that in the stratosphere it was intercepting sunlight for approximately for a year or two and decreasing the amount of sunlight getting down to the earth and this is recorded all over the northern hemisphere now when very old tree and Terra key and California even. You have three scars from freezing of the trees in the summer time in June in July that the California bristlecone prime pine that can be dated to 16 28 the actually 16 27 base which is one of the things that date the explosion. Sixteen twenty eight.

The Apparently it it had previously been thought that the decline of Minoan civilization was well I guess nobody really knew us both some people thought that there was. That it was a result of warfare that invaders came from from somewhere else and and that that was why there was this precipitous decline and disappearance of this culture. And apparently now it it does seem to be the fact that it was this that that it was this natural disaster. And and it was serious enough apparently it would have caused enough destruction it could have killed enough people so that in a in a very short space of time you could have the decline of what what was a very dominant and very powerful culture at the time. Right it appears. And the final piece of that puzzle we're going to know when it was found under the volcanic ash and from what can be seen on Crete and the migrations of people not only in Crete but throughout the entire Middle East at

that time. The complete havoc you have records of written records in China of the false winters and summer and famine threat to land in the northern provinces man becoming as a mini eater and much closer on the island of Crete we can only imagine what the effects in Korea were and Crete was the the center of Minoan civilization. Evidently you had a tremendous crop failures failure of the tuna fish populations a main staple for food. And what would have resulted in first an environmental collapse certainly tremendous economic collapse following that. And as Plato describes it you had some sort of collapse you had people who were still around and then Greeks came in from the north and this is exactly what we see archaeologically the Greeks moving in the Gyptian to record the changeover of government as the Greeks moved into Crete and the other Minoan centers and that

basically employed the Minoan architects and so on to build new palaces new temples. Well let me just reintroduce our guest here for people who may have tuned in we're talking with Charles Pellegrino he is the author of the book unearthing Atlantis an archaeological Odyssey. It's fairly recently been published and if you are interested in calling in here you have comments questions give us a call. Three three three wy allow eight hundred two to two W while the the effects of this volcanic eruption were were so widespread. You have talked about the fact that it shows up in the evidence on the North American continent. The Chinese talked about it. One thing that's particularly intriguing. Certainly the Egyptians were close enough to have some fairly dramatic experience a fairly dramatic effect. You think perhaps that might be. The basis for the plagues that are documented in the Old Testament right and also documented in one pirates in

Egypt and almost the same language as the Old Testament they referred to darkness throughout the land of Egypt. It refers in the same language to not being able to leave the temple for a certain number of days the number of days differs from the Old Testament but the language is the same and saying that you could not see the shadow of the person next to you even though the person was right next to you there is reference to plague and pestilence and the Egypt consult the report at the time the change over of government on Crete and so it's one of the things that at least we don't know we don't see any evidence archaeologically Yet that. Of an exodus and of a Moses and any of that at this point we do see that some of the things that seem very odd in the Old Testament appear actually to have occurred the ash layer has actually been found in Egypt and can be dated on the Nile Delta too. 16:28 be

the Daniel Stanley at the Smithsonian is the person who first fanned the fish layer and this all helps us to date at least the plagues of Egypt the reign of the pharaoh took most of the feared action light to around the time of the cover region. They took most of the third and the stepmother Queen Hatchett. Which words if one takes literally the Biblical descriptions which don't describe who the pharaoh of the Exodus were and the Pharaohs of the oppression. One of the pharaohs would have actually been a woman. Rather interesting. One of the things that I had wondered about was that you know when you think of the the the power that any influence of the day Minoan culture must have had in its day. How it is that it managed to disappear so completely from you know not only was there it was the physical evidence gone but it seems that within the historical record there is very little so that

when fairly recently. It was we discovered it was sort of a surprise. Well there are echoes of Minoan civilization in the Iliad the Aug and the Odyssey and descriptions of the Minoan gods and ceremonies and so on and palaces. They did what appear. And even in the Odyssey there's a description of the civilization as described by Plato but they're not called Minoans or Atlanta and at that time and that they were some sort of calamity that these people had disappeared. So there are echoes of it throughout the later Greek civilization. Apparently the first person to do work on Thera and to identify that is a place to work was the Greek archaeologist you mentioned spear Donmar not right. Right. Why what was it that attracted him to Thera and decided that was a that was a good place to look.

Excavations on Crete that were revealing that there had been cities washed over by tidal wave or something of that sort. He was finding huge blocks building stone. Foundation stones to building where the top half of it will be gone and fanned the upper half of the one of the blocks that back two or three hundred feet away. He was wondering gee if someone had come through here and invaded this city he could understand them setting it on fire or doing something or looting or what have you. But people who come into cities to rape and pillage don't take fan base and stones apart and caught the upper head hundreds of feet away and looking toward the island of fear which by then had been identified as a volcanic crater from some sort of explosion he began to imagine maybe a tidal wave came from that direction and maybe he could find

him in no win city somewhere under that island. And he went and I know whether archaeologist who worked with him in the head. He was one of the most intuitive archaeologist. Two he really followed his intuition and it was a very lucky strike a thing and one dream valley on the island of fear and that it would be logical for the people to build here on the southern shore getting the sunlight during the you know the most sunlight during the winter and everything in the first place he dug. He thin buildings. He ended up uncovering a whole city that a man known to be almost a mile across with a present means of excavation it will probably take another 300 years to fully excavate this city one square block has been excavated so far.

It's really is sort of remarkable when in the way that you describe him he's he does seem to have been able to picture in his mind what the way things were back then. He was the one who as he looked at the evidence sort of decided that perhaps that it was in fact this there was this volcanic eruption. It did cause this particular kind of destruction that perhaps was what happened to the Minoans and it was not not manmade but natural disaster he seemed to know where to look. He seemed to have the ability to to look at the evidence and then in his mind imagine what it must have taken place. Right. And actually you walk among ruins and be walking through living in these mines. And I've heard that description from people who worked with him from his daughter from a few archaeologist in Israel that he had a way of

really bringing the past alive you would be walking with him and you would no longer be walking with him through very one. I've known one paleontologist like that to one of my teachers who we will be walking through fire a pit and or through clay pit in New Jersey and we will no longer look at walking through a clay pit with a few fossils in the walls we would actually be walking through a 70 million year old farts. The sky started to cook and you felt as if you were really walking through the path when you were tracing a stream bed to where deposits of Amber might lie. Well if today if you go and you walk around this this space that has been excavated this disproportion of the Old City. What what will you see take us as for a little walk and describe what they have found ations of the first and second stories of buildings that were in fact up to four stories some of them maybe five stories

high that. And you're walking through streets that do not look at all unlike the streets on the island today. Some of the buildings would not look at it out of place at all among modern oceanfront condos on the island of direct. And the street plans are basically the same dictated by the geology and geography of the island and the wind. You find building that they had stairs going up the upper floors. There they were riddled with plumbing. They had flush toilets convey almost 4000 years before flush toilets were supposedly invented. It's possible that they might have actually been venting steam from the volcano from volcanic vent through the pipes in the hairdos to heat them in the winter time and also to condense water up on the roof for toilet than showers and bath tubs which you also find in the Harris's. Vary

your standard of living. That was really unsurpassed the minnow when I made island of Crete they had a weird system to rival the Los Angeles that would system today. They unlike the Gyptian who whatever excess profits came out of their economy tended to build huge monuments to themselves in giant tombs and so on. The Minoans appear to have put most of their excess income into large civil works projects such as there were systems where have you find where I have it like you find nowhere else in the ancient world. And recently the world's first dam has been uncovered and it made no one. This morning we're speaking with Dr. Charles Pellegrino. He's the author of a book entitled an earthing at land as an archaeological Odyssey which is about some of the archaeological work that has been done in the Aegean and on an island called Thera which a long time ago was destroyed by a very powerful

volcanic eruption somewhere around 600 B.C. It was part of the Minoan culture which was the very part of very powerful culture at at the time very powerful naval power and. One that went into a precipitous decline around that time and it appears now this that was the reason it was the eruption of Thera. Also it seems that it might have been the beginning of the story which has come down to us as the story of Atlantis about this place where there was a very highly evolved civilization but was destroyed by natural disaster. Those people who brought us that story Plato among them may in fact have been remembering what had happened to Farrah. So that's where the title of the book unearthing Atlantis comes from and we have a couple of folks here with questions and anybody else would like to call in certainly is welcome to do that. Three three three. WRAL is our local member 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. And we also have a toll free line that's good. Anywhere you can hear us. And that's 800 1:58 W

I L L. Well we have a caller here on our toll free line we'll talk to them. Hello. Yes good morning. I have a comment and a question. The comment I have basically is this and reading Plato. He is very adamant and very straightforward about the general size of the population of Atlanta us in that time and basically he's talking about 63 million inhabitants. OK which one I read that number I had read twice. Because basically in my mind that the speech of a technology in society which is has a very well-developed distribution system well developed finances because you just can't support 63 million people in an agrarian nomadic. Pick your berries way through the woods type technology. The other thing the question I have for your guest in thinking about the Minoan culture. My general

thoughts on it and I want to know if maybe you've thought about this also would be the Bayeux the waiter byproduct of possible surviving a bland peons after the demise of the main culture. OK and what I'd like to do is maybe hear a comment or two on that regarding natter fame but I also had that thought also. Well the first settlers of the island that became a no win appear to have come down from terror. And there are of course in the Atlantis tale as told by Plato. Certain embellishments which would have been common around 350 B C and we're talking about an event that would Pakistan probably mostly through oral tradition and. Plato was telling a cautionary tale so he made the Atlantic and civilization larger than Libya and Asia put together he

and there was a true tendency among the Classical Greeks to play mythic only then into the Atlantic Ocean opposite Gibraltar on the other sides of the pillars of Hercules Gibraltar bogarting Russia to move them in there so there are certainly some embellishments in the tale that although there are other things like these very specific descriptions of the golden cup symbol ceremonies and the crash of earliest civilization that through its technology and through its five years gave rise to much of what became classical Greece being fit in very very close and there would be a natural catastrophe at the time that the civilization fell also is another giant piece of the jigsaw puzzle Well I've got a question for Eason what about the canals that they talk about the worst third of 10 circular canals will have intersecting lines that would look somewhere to a wagon wheel with spokes and that each

of these canals was approximately what they called or referred to as being temps Prada. And Will Cain in hand. From what I've been told I go come straight out of roughly equivalent to a mile. Also if you look at the present geography of the island it looks somewhat You have a ring of violins and you have even after the explosion you would have had a smoke or something bubbling up from the center where there had been a manner in which the Gyptian when they first explored the wreckage of the earth and that there had been an island that was gone they wouldn't have imagined that it flew into the stratosphere. Much of it must have sunk. But you do have sort of like this bull's eye these kind centric ring images that are the remnants of the island and could have grown up as part of the legend and even later on Crete

being part of the crescent shaped Creek the heart of the country centric 15. What about the 63 million inhabitants of Plato talks about the old. I mean that's an exaggeration. Where would you come up that particular number. Who knows where the number would have come up. Even putting the island 9000 years before Plato's time the civilization of Atlantis where actually it was a little more than affairs and some people say that it could have been the placing of a number and I think people are some of the scholars who said oh this number might have been mistranslated and then you get nine thousand dollars 9000 years before Plato if you translate it properly. I think that focusing too much attention on what need be explained only as embellishment. There is no evidence that any of the large land mass of any sort ever sank any part of the Atlantic ocean suddenly. Here are a

relatively small event compared to what the Atlantis continent sinking on the bottom of the Atlantic would have been. And yet here it disrupted life in the entire northern hemisphere and even there with new scanning equipment when you look at the ocean floor or in theory you see that this thing tore up the entire eastern Mediterranean there are cracks radiating out from the big blow hole in the earth. It's eight miles across really tracks one of these cracks goes along the sea floor for almost a hundred miles while in Turkey you find Channeled Scablands that go 30 miles inland and only been done some modeling of what that tidal wave would have been like it was focused very high in Turkey or with you know a tidal wave. Depends on the shape of the shoreline and here the tidal wave got stuck between two peninsulas almost as if between the promise of a tuning fork to move 30 miles inland it had to be 800 feet when it reached the

shore. That's amazing made it halfway up the Twin Towers or 200 feet over the Washington Monument. That's amazing. Can I ask you one more question. You're familiar with the Krakatoa. Yeah Balkan and magnitude of size how many how many times greater Do you feel that this volcanic explosion was one cracked though. Oh at least eight times. Crap Oh it was unmanned thing hell and those volcanic eruptions were on a scale of the year and the way the Earth might be imagined to measure things they were read aloud heck up here it would have by comparison been a major coronary. Roy That's amazing. That's an interesting show you guys are hosting thank you very much. Thanks for the call Bob school and here we get somebody on our line number one to talk with. Hello. Yeah. The degree explains everything outside the Straits of Gibraltar and the word was inland. The night

became the Atlantic Ocean I'm just wondering what the origin of the word is and why why the Greeks kept placing everything that far away I guess that's because. Their spear of influence and was the whole Mediterranean a well Atlantica and Atlantis don't seem to Atlantis the name is evidently not derived from Atlantic Ocean. Judging from the work of some people who have looked at they the Atlantis might derive more from the and possibly even Atlantic from the plane. The tribe in northern Africa and what was the other question. Well the Greeks placed everything out of the Straits of Gibraltar and why would they place their way in the Atlantic pretty much with the new mythologies we create today if you imagine for instance Star Trek The Next Generation which is. Who knows what people might think of that looking back 2000 years from now. But they is the new infinit realm and seems almost endless. So

we put a lot of mythical events out there and the space the Atlantic Ocean was to the Classical Greeks much as space is today. No one knew what was on the other and no one knew half far and it was a place to put things. Just as today we have space shuttles and so on that are just beginning to probe space and we flung robots at there and it's a nice place to put our new hails and you'll notice if you watch some of the science fiction today some of the new stories that are told and placed in space are actually based on ancient mythology and we've taken ancient oral traditions and retold them in a larger scope. I guess I would like to pursue I guess maybe down in the land to sort of the Roman word and Atlantis would been what we empower we translate or interpret Plato's. As you know I want to she would be the first user of it. It seems

a fair coincidence that that Senate plan ticker so similar and I mean it's possible there are a lot of those kind of etymological things I wanted to mention a book by the late I as a mom just and sort of along the same lines that you did. A guy told the New Testament and what he does is he goes through the Bible and looks at the oral tradition and then looks at other sources Flavius Josephus some people who were other texts other histories and sort of tries to take the stories in the Bible and show how that they're like condensed over generations and reinterpreted. It's an interesting work I don't know how yet by very good book by the way you know he's written a bad three or four books that bear the Bible. And they're very very interesting. I'm wondering if any people know he's written books on all the places you go to if you want to get an analysis of Shakespeare books on Shakespeare.

Also fascinating because he wore out five typewriters a year until he got a Wordpress or something like that. I'm wondering if he was writing a book a month yet that a book every month the middle one civilization had probably an opposing civilization and I'm wondering if the natural catastrophe that wiped it out was sort of I mean we don't know much about Carthage because the Romans succeeded in why they seem to have gone way out of their way to wipe out any trace of Carthaginians civilization to a large extent. I'm wondering whether this kind of thing and in fact the way Plato is telling us a cautionary tale was the like saying there was a marvel judgment and that the Latins were practicing evil evil things or is there any is there any kind of dynamic written on a back room or any archaeological evidence that these were an evil violent civilization quite the opposite unlike the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian and the Greeks.

We judging from their artwork at least we don't see signs of violence we see men jumping over bowls and. Carrying out some rather odd Bowl ceremonies but we don't see people going at spearing animals in every which direction and putting spears through each other and propping each other's heads up on stakes you know the sort of thing we see everywhere else in the world when we look at the paintings in the average Minoan home. We see animals that play with ladies gathering flowers and you know events like that. I wasn't suggesting that they really were evil I'm just suggesting that it seems to be a tendency when the city is destroyed or something that people feel well in a just universe things like that don't happen in life. They brought some kind of evil upon themselves. They must've been doing something wrong. And if that is not included in some of them but history is written by people whom the civilizations that survived or I mean

are you seeing any of that in Plato. Yeah from the standpoint of the Greeks who kind of went in and took over terror but I think what we see more there is the tendency of trying to justify random evil in the universe or random events or disasters. The victims to become villains because they're victims and victims because they're villains after the fact. People said that even after the destruction of think Pierre in 1982 by the explosion of man Pelley And it was said oh the people of this city that was destroyed 30000 people killed in a few seconds. They they practiced to Bhutto and that that was God's vengeance upon them almost any 30 that destroyed by some disaster like that someone will say something along those lines.

Very interesting. Thank you. Thanks for the call a little while ago we were talking about the the the progress of the the excavation work on Thera. And if I be if I had remembered this right in 20 years of work they managed to uncover one city block. Right. And at that that rate they think it'll take 300 years to do the whole thing. Right of course what's not being taken into account is we're now able to tap in the grand and the very buildings before any excavation actually begin. And during the next two or three decades we're going to see more and more. I don't doubt that we will see the introduction of robots into archaeological dig and nanotechnology and all that sort of thing. It's possible that some way a dam in the back three decades the excavations could start going much much faster and I've been working with Jim Palin at Brookhaven National Labs on ideas on how we should

play a city like that because it is one of the great off the Hodge ical treasures of the world buried city on the island of the earth. Been very very well preserved by the same volcano that destroyed it ironically. Is there any any doubt that the money might be there to actually do the work. At the time there are there have there are very strange things that go on with funding on the Greek islands and often money goes into banishes before it ever gets to the place its supposed to get to. And this is one of the great dangers to the fight at this point. It is not being very well maintained. Parts of buildings have begun to crumble to dust. I remember the chief talky ologists there weeping in front of me saying that at one point we were talking about have my actually been better had we left this city

buried as it was where it was at least protected. The attention that's being focused on it now I think is going to start changing some of that at least making sure that no more damage occurs. To the degree and eventually that a proper protective roof is put over it and reconstruction and proper display for tourists I mean it's a fascinating place if properly displayed parts of it are under as much as 200 feet of volcanic ash and when you remove it and you reconstruct it in the cut in the historic context of a city that is still underneath the surface of the earth it can be quite fascinating to walk through something like that. Well we have about 10 minutes left and again our guest is Charles Pellegrino we're talking about his book unearthing Atlantis an archaeological Odyssey and we have several people to talk with so we'll try to get a mall in here a line for us our next caller a toll free line.

Hello. Hi I got a couple of questions before I ask my question let me comment. You mentioned the plague of total darkness that Egypt and the Bible does record that that was a plague of darkness that was so total and you could feel it however it also says that the places where the Israelites lived had plenty of light. And let me let me ask you about a couple of myths that have grown up around the Minoan culture the first one is the Nazi myth which said that if the so-called master race had originally been at all and peons and in other words the Atlantic were the first area and had have you you sort of come in contact with him it had been oh that nut case it be in the eighteen hundred throats something a bad bad effect that they were superior race. I think Donnelly was his name. Lane Kiffin and to dilute Vian world he wrote a very racist book along the line he had a lot of

other odd ideas that all of Shakespeare's plays were written by William Shakespeare and that was the end and then when he would be a U.S. senator to imagine for Madame von ski and it'll be don't list that wrote a magazine called Stara and Adolf Hitler collected magazines called a star and he got a lot of his I understand a lot of his ideas from the oven about the master race right Hitler was very much into mysticism at some point and in fact it was. Directing at one point the British realize that he was consulting astrologers and they fanned that fact through him channels that Hitler was consulting astrologers and the British then got the best astrologers they could to figure out what the Strollo Jews were telling him and that one of the things that led to a successful Normandy invasion. Because they knew that his astrologers would be telling him that Normandy would not be invaded it had that would not be the place to be hit it would just be a sort of bluff so you don't have to put

many troops there but the basic idea of the Atlantic or the Atlantic it was that somehow the Atlantic was being a super being Superman had inbred with less lesser humans and thereby had polluted there. Well that's that's all part of the marketing surrounding it and some of it of racist origin and so on that's something that came up in the about the 1850s and it just has no relation to anything Plato was writing about. And finally let me let me ask you about that. The modern modern feminists have a goddess cult faction which they which worship the same snake handling God as depicted in the interest of all hung up in much of the snake handling God it is depicted in them in no way in statue not in Minoan frescos. And it's statute it might not have ever been handing handling a snake at all I was just something that it appears

to be a statute that was very badly reconstructed with a lot of imagination put in and it might not actually represent what the statue originally was to begin with. OK let's go on line one is next. Will and mine want yes go ahead. Good morning. This is Dr. Richard I have a request for some information here. First a little entertainment for you all when I first tuned in it sounded to me like you were maybe doing the equivalent of a Trekkies meeting about the past and future. But now I understand that you're talking about something about reality here that I have which I know almost nothing. What country was this and what date are we talking about the eruption of fear in the eastern Mediterranean. We had somebody did you know 16 28 B 6 and that evidence comes from tree ring.

And sediment on the Nile Delta. Looking at the Greenland icecap and and radiocarbon dates of course which bracket the tree ring date though it pretty well figure you didn't date eventis abated my third question there. Well here is a name of a volcano right. And the island is also cold. Same to remain here. Where is that. 70 miles north of Crete. So this fantastic culture was all on one little island Oh no no we've a culture that dominated pretty much the eastern Mediterranean one minnow in fact has just been fan during the last year and a half a man being excavated on the Galilee. They had a very vigorous trade with Egypt there. In fact we're the only civilization that the Egyptians referred to a civilized sea.

Whoa. Has anybody figured out what made them great. If they had and well they were they had the world's first Navy and they were able to very easily maintain control over their islands and they kept the Greeks in the north pretty much at bay and till they were weakened by a natural disaster and subsequent economic collapse evidently. Well I'll sign off with two little questions how do you spell the name of the volcano and the name of the island in their day. Oh we don't know what the what the people actually call themselves the Gyptian is called the captive KFT. I knew you would. I think my spelling is not good. Oh OK. And the island is been known by later names such as fear of which means fear and also fame to rename

which is a more recent. So there's a body of thought that calls the island the same as the volcano because I guess in that region they started as just a volcano and its lava made the island as its own apparently happened in Hawaii right. All right thank you very much. We have time for another call who will go to line number two. Hello I'm revisited here for I guess Chri can look pretty good. I'm very sorry. When I finally realized that we had gotten to it and we were and it was just down it at that scale of it. You came to mention that the thing that struck me my first approach to Syria was by boat and you can rattle off numbers off the tongue a mile diameter until you're sitting in a boat in the middle of this thing and imagining there'd been a Manton almost a mile

above you and everywhere where you're seeing water there was a Manton and maybe even streams and everything and it's gone. It just stops you did I see you in a new volcano. Coming up in the middle of the crater. Yeah yeah yeah and you can walk or a building. What is a name that's me. The excavation of your time that you named after the ten that the excavation is taking place under and it Akrotiri it from the very southern shore of one of the fragments of the island of fear. That they wanted less would have been up into the public and eating before. Yeah yeah and on certain days it's been then they walk people through the street. Yeah OK here it is very interesting to be there and visit it and it is readily accessible.

And I would suggest that people want to go that they go but not in August because the whole world is there and I wouldn't be sacrificed in roof over the site it's very interesting to be pros that give somewhat that impression of a video most of if you walking through a cave that had the city on its floor almost as if you are walking under the year. To me it gives very much that feeling of the final scenes in the James Mason movie Journey to the center of the year. Everything but the Bernard Hermann music. I thought it was interesting to me and I place a call bit in the plate and I personally knew one culture among other things talking about what a life and I had been like in terms of social organisation as an alternative. The kind of thing that we think is seen like history was with no time in pain. War and.

Hard Summer I feel quickly but I do recommend that book I think we've had. I mean I was hired as a seeker. It's readily available in paperback and really really interesting because there are some interpretations of it that is one of the things we get from the painting on Crete for example my food women evidently did share power with men and Minoan civilization which would have been a first. Except for Queen had ships food in Egypt. But then they be filed her tomb and everything after she died. And she really only had to fight to stay in rule and in fact she just barely managed by dressing up as a man and wearing a full beard and everything but we don't see traces of those same types of difficulties. And you know when civilization began are here and a couple qualify go is talking about a worship and thanks and so forth

and interpretation of that in there too including information in the Bible about him. The Ark of the Covenant. I mean like a crime. I thought the whole thing of interweaving a symbol. I was tired a whole bunch of different bits of information I had running. Thanks so much you've been very young here thank you for the call well we're at the point unfortunately we're going to have to stop. However it is a very interesting book and I recommend anyone who would whose interest is piqued to take a look at it. The book is entitled unearthing Atlantis. It's published by Random House and it's to recently come out and the author Charles Pellegrino I want thank you very much Dr. pelligrino for talking with us today. Thank you for having me on.