The Cousteau Odyssey; Calypso's Search for Atlantis; Part 1

I don't know if you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it, but I'm sure you're going to be able to do it. The Cousteau Odyssey is made possible by a grant from the Atlantic Richfield Company. A course centuries, the agency remains the timeless world of myth. In myth, we store our oldest memories, journey to our beginnings, walk the streets of towns fallen to rabble

a thousand years before we were born. Anchored at Dia, a small bear island of the North Coast of Crete, the Calypso 2 will make such a journey backward in two time. It all began with a chance aerial photograph. I had of course encountered the Atlantic's legend in many places. Indeed, my son Philippe traveled to the Azores, Cocoa Island, Bimini and elsewhere to investigate claims that each is Atlantis. Yet as I studied the photographic blur apps of an odd, therm -like shape outlined under the waters of St. George's Bay, I did not then imagine where it would lead. I hardly suspected that soon I too would find myself embarked on a new

quest pursuing a myth without familiar landmarks or stars searching for the long -lost civilization of Atlantis that many still believe lies buried under the sea. I had of course encountered the Atlantic's legend in many places such as the Calypso 2 will make such a journey backward in two time.

Like the record of Earth itself, the history of man often is hidden in riddles, a strangely carved stone in a wilderness, a city entombed in volcanic ash, its life caught in an endless pause, a ruin or shipwrecks swallowed by the sea. Yet men and sister -in -arms sometimes true, sometimes fanciful. In the clear waters of the Bahamashalos of Florida, Philippe Cousteau and his airborne team will find both. Beneath the wings of the PBY, a perfectly round eyelid lies like a stain on the sea. Here submerged sand forms are constantly reshaped by shifting tines and currents, there

a broken line of coral reefs. From the plain side blister, Philippe views a stranger apparition, a geometric pattern similar to ancient landscape designs often believed signals to space. But the intersecting dotted lines are only the seismic blast holes left by survey teams searching for oil. A blue hole, which often is described as unfathomable, but actually is no more than 350 to 400 feet deep, is shot by Dr. David Zink, historian and explorer. Near Nassau, the travelers see the rectangular underwater structure, long imagined

by casual observers, to be the ruins of an ancient temple. An exploratory dive during a brief stopover reveals no ruin temple, only long wheat -grown piles of rough stone. It is in fact, as Dr. Zink, a pen or so -called crawl, similar to other enclosures in the area once used for the storing of sponges, but long since abandoned. Now the travelers near the destination they have come far to find in the waters of

Bimini Island, the odd, reversed J -shape called the Bimini Road. Though it has been surmised at much of the construction or its surrounding area, still lies concealed under the shifting sands of the bottom. More than a third of a mile, the length of six -foot ball fields lies clearly defined, a puzzle with no easy answer. Slowly wheeling into the wind, Philippe brings the converted World War II reconnaissance and rescue aircraft down to a landing almost directly above the Great J. Now see -borne, the versatile

flying boat becomes a headquarters for aquatic exploration. With co -pilot Michael Sullivan and other members of the team, Philippe soon exchanges Flyer's garb for a diver's gear, now makes a descent direct from the sea plane itself. Guided by Dr. Zick, the divers move through the warm shallow

waters, hardly 15 feet deep, at last reach the so -called road itself. This, some students believe, is a visible fragment of Atlantean civilization from which both Egypt and the pre -Columbian cultures of Central America learn the arts of pyramid building. Those convinced that the road is the work of megalithic builders in early historic times, argue that only a highly skilled human agency could have chiseled the square edges of these 15 tonne stones and assembled them as a pavement, bearing no natural relationship to the bedrock. Nevertheless, core samples have shown that both pavement and underlying

rock are composed of the same consolidated limestone sediment. Atlantis or no, the structure today is guarded by nothing more than an occasional poisonous rockfish camouflaged among the stones. Later, on a wing of the PBY, Philippe and Dr. Zick discuss possible explanations for the site. What do you think it is? Well, I think it's a megalithic site, which is a big stone, the Greek words, the big stone, such as the megalithic sites in Europe, a Karnak, Brittany, stonehead in England.

They were a people that had some, I can't prove it yet, but I suspect a people of some astronomical sophistication of people that by some means or another could handle at least 15 tonne stones were well organized enough to plan out a project and carry it out. Various people were in the area, generally, but this seems to relate to no known culture pattern. We encountered so many problems with various compasses here underwater. We suspect some kind of energy pattern here that's affecting the magnetic field. I don't know what it is, but you have ruled out in your mind and you're sure yourself that this is not natural formation. That's about all I'm sure about. My argument is essentially

a morphological structure, a pattern. In nature, it's most unusual to have joints terminate abruptly. We would expect if this were a natural formation, a beach rock formed in place here, we would expect it to have a little more substantial relationship to the bedrock. And as you saw, it does not. We're often little stones supporting and leaving a space on here. The horseshoe, of course, it opens to the northeast. It is, you saw the extension, which makes it into a horseshoe, taking it out of a reverse J configuration and in more of a horseshoe or hairpin kind. Opening to the northeast. Here's where the fracture is. And here's where the transition from Los Angeles to

Toronto. Yeah, and five across to 14 single stones here and five across here. But here we have six, six falling after. Yeah, I'm not claiming this is Atlantis, but this is an interesting coincidence. Plato claimed that the Atlanteans honored every fifth and sixth year alternatively. Five and six then were sacred numbers apparently. So this is one of the coincidences here. You said, I think this might have been the origin of the legend of Atlantis. I feel that it may possibly relate to Atlantis for one thing because of its antiquity. But if I speculate in that direction, to me, it makes no sense. There's anything but some kind of outpost or colonial outriders, so to speak. Do you think it's possible if Plato would have made it up entirely? Anything is possible, but

well, in a time of difficulty, in a time of agony about the present and the future, it's so easy to look to a golden age. You know, and it's comfortable psychologically. It's a rationalization and short. Well, that's one way to interpret it. But there are other ways. What would be the impact it was from? So the impact of course anyone who has the slightest interest in Atlantis is interested in it because of its impact and its impact essentially would be, I suppose, look out. Maybe you'll go down the drain too. You know, a highly sophisticated civilization can fail. Despite its many forms, the Atlantis legend has but a single source. Plato, who told of a rich land beyond the pillars of Hercules, its capital city ringed by canals

and inhabited by a people noble and wise, all shattered and sunk in a single day. Though modern ocean mapping has found no suitable scar, Cousteau points out that man's invention has imagined Atlantis almost anywhere. Easter Island in the south and Coco Island in the north are thought fragments of a Pacific continent called Mugh, a variant of the Atlantis legend. Bimini in the west Atlantic, the Canary Islands of Africa, the Azores, the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Helgoland, off Germany and the North Sea, the island of Crete and the Mediterranean. For each, modern supporters have argued its claim to be Plato's earthly paradise. But always the evidence is implausible or contrary to known fact, or at the

least insufficient. At Easter Island, the accrues are mute witnesses of a turbulent past, but hardly the history of Atlantis. Journeying to Coco Island off the west coast of Costa Rica, Philippe Cousteau does find something that approaches a paradise. Everywhere the island is green with lagerian growth and flowers, the air filled with tropical birds, its landscape hung with misty waterfalls, yet it bears little resemblance to Atlantis. The Azores, perhaps,

lie closest to the littoral site described by Plato, but there is no evidence that a high civilization died here. The great flights of birds sometimes circling a point in the South Atlantic, hardly prove as some insist that they seek the sunken Atlantis, once a resting place on their migratory route to South America. Yet legend sometimes grows around the kernel of fact. Myth often serves a continuing human need, a faith to buttress man against adversity. On the north coast of Crete, at Epiphany, each January 6th, the people of Haraklion follow their guardian priests in solemn procession to perform an annual ritual. Not far from Calypso lying at the stone jetty, the procession moves to the

harbour's edge. There, as the blessed cross has thrown into the water and quickly retrieved, the people celebrate a communion with the sea ancient long before Christianity. Only several miles away, on the high land above the modern harbour, the ruins of the great palace of Knosus lie silent now, but here once was the center of a fabled civilization. Here, from 3 ,000 BC, Manuel King's ruled the seas of the Eastern Mediterranean for 1 ,500 years. Yet oddly, they had no safe

harbour then along a coast swept by the fierce northwest wind, the melt emmy. As a mariner, Kusto finds the paradox intolerable. To rule the seas, one must have a safe and ample port. But where? The island 7 miles away? Visited only by occasional fisherman or the priest who comes to perform mass once a year, via is silent and uninhabited. Yet, as Kusto observes the bays of its deeply -intented southern or leeward side, he feels a gathering certainty that ships have found shelter here since early times. No sooner has Calypso dropped anchor than the diving team prepares to make its first exploratory descent from the launch, hopeful that history has left its evidence scattered upon the bottom.

Albert Falco, the chief diver, is particularly eager. From an earlier dive in the waters off the island years ago, he remembers a glimpse of a copper plate near a half -barried ancient galley. With Kusto, an interested observer awaits the result. Dr. Kreetsus, archaeologist and representative of the Greek government. Almost at once, at about a hundred feet of depth, the diver's lights begin to reveal the submerged field of artifacts, the scattered array of pottery and miscellaneous debris from hundreds of years of trade, war, piracy and

casual accidents of the sea. But, as he was in his sight, every where it seems, jaws and emphoros from periods as far back as Roman times lie half -embedded in the sediment of the bottom.

Again at the surface, the diving team hurries back to Calypso. Even at a distance seen from the deck of the ship, they hardly appear as bearers of bad news. As the launch pulls alongside, Falco quickly confirms Kusto's conjectures regarding Dia's use as a shelter for ships. Though Falco has not found his remembered galley, he reports the riches that litter the bottom. Unnumbered emphoros and other pottery, many of them still almost intact. If you look at this, you can see that there is a lot of water. Immediately Kusto joins the search. Accompanied

by Falco, he now makes a descent in the Sukup, the self -contained diving saucer, extending the range of the first reconnaissance. At 120 feet, their looms from the bottom, the coagulated cargo of a Roman shipwreck, dating from the first century after Christ. Nearby, a more recent relic appears, a rusted anchor probably lost during the Venetian siege of Crete. In bay after bay, reefs of pottery mark the sights of other sunken ships. Clearly, over a period of at least 2000 years, Dia has been across roads of maritime traffic in the eastern Mediterranean. Because aerial views sometimes reveal the tracings of ancient

pathways or structures not visible on the ground, an electric camera is bolted to the undercarriage of the helicopter to shoot a connected sequence of vertical views showing the entire island. From the air, the stone hills and sheer cliffs of Dia suggest little possible connection to a myth of Atlantis. Baron and forbidding the vestiges of one -time walls and structures now enclose only emptiness. Amid the rocks grows a thinly scattered vegetation, fairly enough to provide forage for the small bands of Crete, an endangered species of wild goat introduced on the island and

what may be a futile effort to save it. Now, for the first time at St. George's Bay, Christo sees the vague milky outline of an underwater shelf jutting out from the shore of the peninsula. With Falco and cameraman Carcopino in a wardrobe aboard ship, Christo performs the painstaking task of joining the helicopter pictures in a complete mosaic of the island. But as he carefully connects the broken fragments of landscape shown in the photographs, Christo cannot free his mind of the enigmatic image beneath the surface of St.

George's Bay. What is it? Some natural feature perhaps? Its outline seems too regular. More and more, Christo surmises that the underwater structure was built by human hands. It's not the most important thing in the world, it's the one in the 20th century. Puzzled by the mysterious thumb shape, Christo now prepares to make an extended dive in St. George's Bay with Falco, Ivonne Jacoletto and Bernard Delamotte. Again, I enter a world at once familiar and strange, a world of subtle sensory distortions. Here it is easy to believe in myth. As we

slowly pass over the wheat -grown site, it is soon apparent that this is no natural formation. But what could be the purpose of this emerged? Man -built mound, hyzing 65 feet from the bottom at its outer extremity. I can only assume that it stood out of the sea in ancient times. When, by modern calculation, the level of the Mediterranean was 10 to 15 feet lower than now. So the mound is constructed mainly of rubble and ordinary round stones. They allow here and there carefully chiseled building blocks which serve no function and whose presence so far from shore seems inexplicable. Together, Bernard and I swim along the lateral wall, pose briefly at a

wide furrow that breaks the slope. At last, we pass upward to reach the flat top of the mound, barely 10 feet below the surface. Approximately, all is clear. We are on the wide expanse of a rounded jetty. Along its sides and in the water beyond, the harbor is crowded with broad -held merchant ships and even sleek war galleys of a dozen nations. On these stones, jossal men of Egypt, Syria, Macedonia and Sicily, working, trading, gambling, gossiping, so often they share a mutual vocabulary of hardly half a dozen worlds. This warehouse, whose remnant wall we measure,

is crammed with bales of wool and fiber, with rows of amphora filled with oil and wines and salted meats and spices for certainly here is one of the great intersections of the ancient world. Here, a ship stands on braces while a crew seals its ruptured hair. Of course, it was taken up this v -shaped ramp or groove by which ships are hauled from the water for repair and surely for such a harbor that must have been a large town, world no doubt against the pirates that infest the seas. I pose, is it true, or am I too engaged in myth -building? I return to the surface. Based on the

mosaic, Kustav has prepared an overlay showing the port in its huge fortified wall, nearly all now erased. Could it have been brought down by the legendary eruption at Thera to the north, which some believe caused the downfall of Minoan Grete? Perhaps, but as yet there is no proof that Dia existed at the time of Knosus. To hasten the search, a new craft is now formally added to Calypso's auxiliary fleet. The diving platform Eulith, christened by Madame Kusto in an appropriate ceremony. See for yourself.

Later, tricolor flying, the raft is taken on its maiden voyage across the bay to the site of its first mission. For what becomes one of the most systematic underwater excavations ever attempted, Kustav and Kritsas have selected a prospective site, 10 meters square, close to the Sunken Harbour Jettie. Let by Bernard Delamott, the

divers prepare the area, sinking steaks at each corner for the strings which will mark the boundaries. For greater precision in fixing the location of any found artifact, the enclosure will be further subdivided into 25 smaller units, each 2 meters square. As the area at last is ready to be cleared for the dig, a large frame with 2 triangular supports is lowered into position on the bottom. Sliding along its crossbar, cameras will make stereoscopic photographs of each stage of the excavation. Aboard the Euliths, the divers

prepare to descend. This time, instead of the usual individual air tanks, they will depend upon a hookah, a system of multiple hoses whereby each diver draws his air from a common source fed by a compressor. To test how well the filter is working, they sample the product with varying opinions. Delamott calls it mountain air. Raymond call judges it antique. But soon complaints forgotten, the suction pipe is lowered, the team suits up and plunges to the work site below. On

bottom, each member of the team exchanges his diving fins for a shorter pair, less cumbersome and walking about the dig area. To counteract his natural buoyancy and prevent him from bouncing as he walks, each man wears a 20 pound weight at his groin to hold him down. With a signal to the surface, the sususe is placed in action, using the utmost care the divers begin to draw the top strut of sediment into the suction pipe. For nothing can be removed or unnecessarily disturbed without the prior consent of the Greek

government representative, Dr. Cretzus. To retrieve even the smallest artifacts, the sediment and water are flushed through a strainer aboard the diving raft. For each 12 inch layer, more than a thousand cubic feet of dirt and sand must be sifted. As the days pass and the first layer is gradually removed, a restless custodives to the site to learn why the dig is not proceeding more rapidly. Actually, he is well aware that the answer is self -evident. Amid this alien intrusion,

schools of little red mullet fear to and fro. More distant, a spiral graph or tube worm tosses like a flower in a spring breeze. Slowly, an increasing array of objects is emerging from centuries of oblivion. Yet each is left in place until it can be labeled charted, photographed and drawn.

Meanwhile, the mullet have overcome their fear, probing for the tiny sea organisms exposed by the sususe, they are having a feast. After the first 12 inch layer of sediment is cleared, a crowded segment lies exposed. Here, history speaks in the mute language of clay, shaped for ordinary use by human hands, all unknowing that in 500 years or 5 ,000, other hands would receive them, touch them and wander, give them an importance never

foreseen or intended. Nevertheless, the cameras are recording a growing visual diary. They are photographed by the stereoscopic cameras, the lines of the grid, like the minutes or centuries by which we divide time, suddenly frame the past. At last, brought to the surface, each piece broken a hole

is measured, catalogued and again photographed by Dr. Kritsas and his assistant. Much of the pottery carries curious monograms or insignias scratched into the clay. These Kritsas carefully traces for further analysis by himself and other classical scholars, while nearby his volunteer helper prepares a drawing. Ascorted by Bernard Delamott, Kustow arrives

to visit the short team. Here, the divers are encamped around the only two buildings on the peninsula. The tiny vestry and church used for a day or two each year, when a priest arrives to celebrate mass and beg protection of the island's patron saint. Amid the rocks, a tiny, apron -sized garden has been planted by the sound technician, but it is an act of misplaced faith. It is doubtful that anyone will eat the carrots, lettuce and radishes. Though Dia has no people, it does have other residents who claim prior rights. By a tantalizing paradox, each discovery seems to open a new mystery. Displaying the artifacts brought up from the deepening excavation

in the bay, Kritsas and Delamott explain that all have been found above a curious bed of gravel that extends through the site and seems to serve as a dividing zone between arrows. If the gravel is placed on the ground, it is placed on the ground. With few exceptions, most of the pottery recovered above the gravel stratum belongs to the Byzantine period in the Christian era, including several ingenious pictures with a built -in strainer at the neck. But any artifacts of earlier cultures, if they are present, still lie buried in the sediment on the bottom. As the dig goes on, a wall of discarded rubble and stone grows beside it, most

of it without particular significance. Yet again, Cousteau is struck by the increasing numbers of building stones that have been encountered. Again wonders what great natural convulsion could have swept them so far from land. As with the great Greek archaeologist, Maranatos, who found evidence of a vast tidal wave on the coast of Crete, Earthquake alone no longer seems to provide an adequate explanation. Week by week, the sususe digs its trenches deeper into the successive layers, always repeating the regular procedure of mapping, labeling, photographing and drawing. Now with each stratum, soil samples also are taken and sent to geological laboratories for analysis. For more information,

visit www .mesmerism .info The treasure of amphoras, bowls and pictures are sent to the surface in the recovery baskets. aboard the diving raft, the pots and shards are carefully separated and later cleaned of incrustations of sponges and other sea growth. Examining the recently recovered artifacts with delamat, Cretzas explains that with each stratum excavated, the dig is

probing deeper and deeper into the past. Though formerly almost all the pottery was Byzantine, now much of the material is Egyptian or Roman, even includes one or two pieces from the classical period of Greece in the fifth century before Christ. Clearly the pots represent a transitional period to an earlier culture, but if we know an artifact, there is no sign. The falcons rule the sky over the year, that is the illusion, actually these falcons are a dying species. Like the wild goats, the Cricri, they exist here at the pleasure of man. Most contradictory of creatures, he alone create sanctuaries for his victims. For himself, there are no sanctuaries against his follies.

Yet as I look at a barn landscape once timbered and green, I cannot believe that man alone created this desolation. I remember the legend of Atlantis' sudden destruction. The belief of some scholars that manone civilization centered in Crete may well have been the model, 900 years before Plato, for the Atlantis he described. As yet however, the dig has revealed nothing to show that the port of D .I. existed as early as manone Crete across the Bay. At the bottom of St. George's Bay, the excavation is coming to an end. After many weeks of effort, after digging through ten feet of successive ancient strata, the divers at last are reaching an unyielding bed of solid rock. It is here at the greatest depth that the first evidence of D .I.'s earliest

origins are found, a cup that clearly belongs to the manoeun epic. It is the most important single artifact recovered at the site. Later, after the sassus has been raised, and after Dr. Crete says, as authenticated the period, a number of other manoeun pieces are found. Not many, for in those early times, men were less wasteful in discarding possessions than later civilizations which would invent planned obsolescence. At a time when rule of the antique world rested with masters of the sea, manoeun Crete controlled the Mediterranean from Sicily to the Middle

East. A starkly simple, unadorned cup reaffirms that as early as manoeun times, the key to Crete lay in the port of D .I.'s. Upon the open ground, Cousteau and Cretzas find shards of pottery from various periods, even find the obsidian so desired by the ancients in the making of tools and weapons. But if D .I.'s port and military outposts for the manoeun

kings at Knossus and Crete, do the building blocks at the bottom of St. George's Bay indicate a natural disaster that left Crete defenseless and caused its abrupt decline, was manoeun Crete Atlantis. Perhaps, but there is a flaw, unlike Atlantis, Crete did not vanish under the sea. We are at the top of this desert island, you know. It's amazing that we find so many things around these ruins, and who could have built this here? There are heaps of stones that probably were much higher in the past, and well, amazing is this big flat stone over there. You think it's not natural? I don't think it's natural. I think it has been, it's probably natural, but it has been a flat stone. I cannot tell. Looking at this desert, to be baffled, to be

absolutely dazzled, so close on Crete, to find remains of civilization and no vegetation. And you think it has been always that way, no? I don't think so, though. I'd like to have seen it in antiquity. Even in muddle, the palace at Knossus is an apparition on an astonishing scale. Here, for 1 ,500 years, the Minoan kings presided of a high culture long before Greece was born. In these porticos and terraces, these courtyards and ballastrated stairs existed the

central aristocracy of a rich and talented civilization that would lie forgotten for 2 ,000 years. Here were born the legends of the bull worshippers, of Tezius' slaughter of the Minotaur, and of his escape from the palace labyrinth, led by Ariadne's thread. Perhaps, too, it was here that Plato's legend of Atlantis was born, for its similarities to Crete are many. Today,

Knossus is a silent ruin, buried and unknown, until the English archaeologist Evans began clearing the site at the turn of the century. But what could have brought its precipitated destruction? All civilizations, like men, ultimately falter and die. By the infirmities of old age, sometimes by their own blind arrogance, sometimes as in the legend of Atlantis, by a natural calamity. Today, there are clear evidences, volcanic ash on the sea floor, coastal structures swept away, even biblical legends of plague and disaster, that the East Mediterranean was swept by an unparalleled cataclysm in the 15th century before Christ. To learn the answers, Calypso will go farther still through the Aegean,

and on to the island once shattered by what has been called the Greatest Explosion ever heard on Earth. To learn the answers, Calypso will go farther still through the Aegean, and on to the island once shattered by what has been called the Greatest Explosion ever heard on Earth. The Cousteau Society and KCET are jointly responsible for the

content of this program. The Cousteau Odyssey is made possible by a grant from the Atlantic Richfield Company. To learn the answers, Calypso will go farther still through the Aegean, and on to the island once shattered by what has been called the Greatest Explosion ever heard on Earth. To learn the answers, Calypso will go farther still through the Aegean, and on to the island once shattered by what has been called the Greatest Explosion ever heard on Earth.