Is Santorini the legendary island of Atlantis?
In the Aegean Sea, about 80 km north of the island of Crete, there is a small island that is part of the Cyclades archipelago, shaped like a crescent, with two nearby islets, Therasia and Aspronisi, separated only by a lagoon.
The name of the island is Thira, also known as Santorini, but in antiquity, it was also known as Kalliste ("the Beautiful").
Once, millennia ago, this island was the seat of a highly advanced culture by the standard historical norms of the time, dare we say "cutting-edge."
If we could go back in time, perhaps, comparing it to what remains today, we would struggle to recognize it.
This is because, millennia ago (specifically about 3600 years ago), the island did not have this shape or size.
It was a circular-shaped island with a mountain at its center, and, taking some evidence from pictorial scenes found on-site as accurate, it must have had rivers and green valleys of papyrus and palms.
Today, for those who land on this island, a sign in English is visible, celebrating it as the "most beautiful island in the world," and, although enchanted by its wild beauty, it cannot help but seem like an exaggeration, given that the landscape is typically volcanic, barren, and sparse. There are neither olive trees nor cypresses, and very few trees and shrubs in general, while vines and tomatoes grow in the few cultivable fields reclaimed from volcanic pumice, arranged in terraces, with containment walls that sometimes reach 6 meters, even making it difficult for people to walk.
The most profitable activity is still, apart from tourism, the extraction from quarries of what is commonly called "pozzolana," composed of silica and lime and used for making cement.
Surely it was not like this 3600 years ago, given that even the Egyptian pharaohs celebrated it as a paradisiacal place.
What remains today is a skeleton, shattered by one of the most tremendous volcanic explosions ever recorded on Earth, and since then, it has been without its central core, sunk hundreds of meters into the sea, forming what, geologically speaking, is defined as a caldera.
Where once the central core of the island was, there are now two black islets that emerged later called Nea Kameni ("recently burnt land," the larger, emerged in various phases between 1707 and 1711, initially and then enlarged during the volcanic eruptions of 1866 and 1926) and Palia Kameni (the smaller, emerged during an eruption in 196 BC).
The entire island is nothing but an active volcano, which, repeatedly in the past, has been a cause of fear and destruction for those living on the island.
Nothing, however, compared to what must have happened 3600 years ago when the central core exploded with a tremendous boom, projecting the central part of the island into the air and sinking the rest under the immense mass of water that must have poured into the newly formed basin. Where once there was land, there are now bare cliffs that testify to the sudden sinking, as if the central part of the island had been struck by a giant mallet.
Archaeologically speaking, the island is interesting because, since 1967, when a true excavation campaign began, it was brought to light again, torn from layers of volcanic ash and pumice, sometimes as thick as thirty meters, deposited over the centuries, a veritable Minoan-era city, complete with pottery, frescoes, utensils, perfectly preserved furnishing items.
It is remarkable to note that the same eruption that caused the destruction of much of the island and the annihilation of the then-flourishing civilization that prospered there has, in fact, allowed, by covering it with its eruptive ash, with its lava debris, that the history of this place could come to us, thousands of years later, with its buildings, its artifacts, its frescoes, protecting it, in its suffocating embrace, from weather, looters, and whatever else.
The preservation of the finds, the extraordinary quantity and quality of the same, the very extension of the residential core and the palaces brought to light soon earned Thera (the name given to this buried city) the, perhaps unjustly, nickname of the Aegean Pompeii.
Why unjustly might this nickname sound? Precisely for the reasons mentioned above (preservation, quantity, and quality) and for other aspects that we will explore later, perhaps it would be fairer to call Pompeii the "Italian Thera" and not vice versa.
The man who brought this city back to life, who unearthed it after centuries of oblivion, was the Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos, who dedicated his entire life to it, even dying on-site, to snatch it from the embrace of the evidence of the tremendous disaster that occurred millennia ago.
Perhaps, from the beginning, it must have seemed clear to Marinatos that, given the enormous amount of work to be done (unearthing buildings, preserving artifacts, cleaning, assembling, cataloging, and much more), he would certainly not be the one to fully reveal this extraordinary site.
But, equally certainly, he must have immediately realized that he was facing an extraordinary discovery, a fascinating undertaking that would inscribe his name alongside, and perhaps even more than, the Howard Carters, the Binghams, the Schliemanns, but that at the same time would create not a few "diplomatic" problems for him with his colleagues.
So it happened, and with the death of its putative father, Santorini is as if it died again, as if almost 40 years of excavations were for nothing, remaining excluded, voluntarily by the hand of others, from normal archaeological itineraries and educational standards, relegated much more simply to the simple designation that labels it as a "site of archaeological excavations related to the late Minoan period."
But is it really so?
And why do we mention Santorini in a site that makes archaeological mystery and unknown facts its main bread?
Because today Santorini may no longer be the "most beautiful island in the world," but it is certainly the seat of some of the most fascinating enigmas of history.
Enigmas that lie behind the actual belonging of the civilization that flourished on this island to any predetermined historical canon; enigmas that, for some authors, academics and not, see this island as the site of the mythical Atlantis narrated by Plato; enigmas that see this island and the discoverer of its ancient city tied in a mortal embrace, a tangle of politics, revenge, crime(?), that seems to recall the most classic thrillers.
In this discussion, we will leave aside what concerns the Santorini-Atlantis connection, referring you, for those interested in the field, to books that report this thesis (Charles Pellegrino "The Discovery of Atlantis", J.V. Luce "The End of Atlantis"), because it would require us to write a book to discuss this theory.
We will refrain from discussing Spyridon Marinatos and his mystery within a mystery, referring you, for further insights, to the work of an Espresso columnist, Mario La Ferla, "The Man of Atlantis," a detailed socio-political investigation of those important years that saw the rebirth of Akrotiri and the mysterious death of Marinatos himself.
We will only highlight particular elements that distinguish Akrotiri and the civilization that must have prospered there and that make it, in fact, one of the most enigmatic places on our planet.
This is to ensure that this place does not fall into the oblivion in which so many other places lie and does not become part of our "collective ignorance" like so many other places whose existence we know but often do not know the "why" and the "how," let alone the "when."
This is because this place indicates that the definitions of "primitive," "prehistoric," the very definition of "civilization" often are terms used improperly and sometimes even offensively.
This is because often it is not cell phones or computers or satellites in space that indicate the degree of civilization, but the ideas that hover in different historical eras and in different groups of people.
This is because, as a well-known writer likes to repeat in his book, if a volcanic explosion had not destroyed Santorini and the civilization that was stationed there, man would probably have reached the Moon a century earlier.
To better understand what we are talking about, we invite you to first look at some images of the excavations of Thera, excavations that are presumed to last at least another 100 years, and that will make available who knows how many more surprises.
How many of you, without the necessary preface, would not have confused these images with those of the much more celebrated Pompeii?
Yet Akrotiri would have much more reason to be mentioned in schoolbooks or in industry magazines.
In January 1866, a few months after the start of the project to build the Suez Canal (Santorini provided an excellent deposit of pumice necessary for cementification) the island's volcano showed new signs of life.
Some French and Greek volcanologists and archaeologists rushed to the island to study the phenomenon, and their attention turned to some stone blocks, constituting walls, that pumice quarry workers had brought to light. A volcanologist, Fouquè, came into possession, through a farmer, of some ancient artifacts and after some excavation work discovered crypts, obsidian tools, a skeleton, and fragments of pots.
Stimulated by these discoveries, two French scholars, Henrì Mamet and Henrì Grocex, began further excavations in 1870, discovering, covered by pumice, walls coated with gypsum, painted with vivid and realistic frescoes, with extraordinary optical effects.
Neither Fouquè nor his successors were able to give a proper temporal placement or identification to this mysterious people, also because the discovery of the Minoan civilization by Evans was still 30 years away.
But anyway, the historical scheme of that part of the world had already changed: the inhabitants of those islands were no longer mere barbarians compared to the then, doctrinally speaking, much more esteemed Greeks, indeed.
The one who gave impetus to the research on Thera was the Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos who, repeatedly, starting from 1930, studied its history, until, in 1956, becoming director of the department of antiquities, he decided to devote himself body and soul to finding the traces of an ancient settlement on the island.
And, in 1967, when the first true organized excavation campaign took shape, fortune did not fail him, showing day by day a civilization that was truly incredible, compared to the standard historical norms not only of his time but also compared to later epochs.
Marinatos had the great merit of understanding that the excavations he conducted needed to be protected, unlike what had happened in Pompeii, from natural elements and from those on two legs.
He thus covered the excavations with thin corrugated sheet metal and fiberglass to still allow the passage of sunlight. In support of this covering, he installed a system of self-supporting steel beams, a system that allowed him ease of installation and extension of the area to be protected.
In this climate and with this ingenuity, Marinatos set out to reveal to the world his "small," great, treasure, even if he immediately realized that between him and the end of the excavations there would be generations of archaeologists and perhaps even a few centuries. But it was really worth it, and it took just a few pickaxe blows to establish this.
What lay beneath the ash and pumice of Santorini were the remains of a well-structured and ingeniously skilled civilization. Its members lived in a sort of idyllic paradise, and this helped them unleash great bursts of creative energy, artistic talent, and sophisticated taste.
During the Bronze Age, the inhabitants of the island enjoyed a standard of living and well-being envied even today by many modern communities, or at least reached only over the last three centuries.
On this sun-drenched island, the inhabitants of Thera built tall and elegant houses, with well-proportioned rooms, and adorned with fantastic examples of the era's pictorial creativity.
Their small homeland was a crucial point for the maritime traffic of the Aegean, and, for generations, they enjoyed unparalleled prosperity, due to the numerous trade exchanges they entertained with the merchants who landed there and with the lands their ships reached.
As the work progressed, it became clear that they were facing something extraordinary. It didn't take long to affirm that the city had been a prominent location. Anyone fortunate enough to land on Thera during that happy era would have been impressed by the row of imposing buildings that stood on the coast.
Large houses with solid foundations and wooden lintels rose on two, three, or perhaps even four floors, used by individual families or by popular assemblies. For its population density and the number of buildings, Thera would have well figured in the presence of the major seaports of the medieval period.
The houses were tangled in a labyrinth of streets and alleys, each equipped with solid doors and stairs, with large windows that gave light and air to large rooms. The furniture, in wood, was of exquisite workmanship, as could be concluded from the plaster casts detected from the shapes impressed in the layer of volcanic ash, the only trace after the wood had long since deteriorated.
In the houses were frescoes that represented episodes of maritime life, long journeys, women in long draped dresses, with bare breasts and sparkling jewelry. The frescoes that depicted scenes of natural life were characterized by a constant presence of animals now no longer existing on the island, such as antelopes, monkeys, swallows, or plants like papyrus and lilies. When the first house so richly decorated was found, it was immediately thought that it belonged to some noble, but then it was soon realized that this represented not an optional but something standard in the houses of Thera.
But the people of this island also had good taste for beautiful things and cleanliness. The houses were indeed equipped with bathrooms with terracotta tubs and stone toilets that once must have had a wooden seat.
The toilets were always found on the second floor of the buildings, and were connected, via clay pipes embedded between the thick walls, to a sophisticated communal sewage system that ran under the streets!
It seems that the Minoans anticipated this invention by at least thirty centuries!!
To give an idea of what this meant, think only that the Venice of the Doges, the Paris of the early 18th century, and even the Palace of Versailles at the beginning were completely devoid of these conveniences.
Conveniences that we find instead in ancient and equally mysterious sites such as Mohenjo-Daro, in Pakistan, and that amazed the first conquistadors who found themselves in front of the beauties of Tenochtitlan, so much so that some testimonies described it as more luxurious than any European city of that time, even than Rome or Constantinople.
But let's return to Santorini.
There must have been, at the time, a water source that apparently filled the city's cisterns and flowed continuously thanks to an ingenious sewage system.
In what is commonly referred to as the Western House, probably, the pressure of the steam from some volcanic source was used so that a sort of autoclave could push water into the cisterns on the rooftops of the houses.
The network of pipes in the houses suggests that the steam, while being channeled into special condensation cisterns where it would be transformed into bathwater, in its path through the walls, would heat the rooms of the houses in the winter.
In fact, it seems that something similar to valves was found although often, out of caution or a desire to hide, another meaning is preferred to be given to certain objects.
Is it just a coincidence that Plato, describing Atlantis, states that it was supplied with water from two sources, one hot and one cold?
Fishing, along with forms of agriculture and livestock, provided the food supplies the population needed. Moreover, every house had a mill to grind barley to make bread.
All the ceramics were a concentration of colors and grace, whether they were basins or cups, jugs or plates, or simple pots.
The style of Thera's ceramics seems to precede that present on the works of Crete, reinforcing the hypothesis that the inhabitants of this island then exported their style even beyond their territory.
The rest of what this civilization needed was surely provided by an important trade with other parts of the then-known world, and therefore the maritime skill of this people was considerably superior to many other peoples of the era. After all, many frescoes show scenes of sea voyages.
All this makes us well understand that Thera was much more than just a cultural suburb of Crete, indeed.
Unlike our Pompeii, in Thera no skeletons of human bodies or animals or truly precious objects have been found. This suggests that most of the population managed to escape in time. Perhaps previous seismic tremors, the opening of fractures in the earth, from which gas emissions and fires began to arise from the volcano cone, greatly frightened the island's population, who decided to find shelter elsewhere.
Someone tried to repair the houses previously damaged by the first seismic tremors, but then abandoned the task, aware of the disaster that was about to strike the island. This can be deduced from the attempts at reconstruction present in some parts.
But what is most astonishing is that the inhabitants of the island left their homes with the firm hope of returning one day. Vases full of neatly placed food, ceramics carefully stored on shelves, furniture arranged and in order, and on the other hand, the complete absence of valuables, suggest a calm and disciplined exodus, rather than a panic-stricken flight.
But tragedy was just around the corner. The violent eruption split the island in two, and strong induced tsunami waves (tsunami) traveled across the Aegean, striking Crete and the other shores of that sea basin with force. The people were stunned by the noises, shaken by earthquakes, suffocated by poisonous gases, while a black cloak as dark as night, formed by the clouds of ashes, descended on that idyllic world.
The Minoan civilization, deprived of its best weapon, the naval fleet, destroyed by the tsunami waves, and terrified by that immense catastrophe, soon fell victim to the invasions of other peoples, among them the Greeks, who soon destroyed a civilization that had reached a peak comparable (if not superior) to that reached by Egyptian society.
Thera was then one of the wonders of the world, one of the most enchanting places, but in an instant, it had become "a fascinating horror in its odiousness," as described in 1885 by the noble James Thomas Bent, during his stay, observing its black beaches and the atmosphere of desolation.
Thera could come alive again, or at least return part of its beauty if the entire site were unearthed, but perhaps the reality is that, today, very few people have heard of it, so where the pumice is no longer present to hide this ancient theater of civilization, there is now the cloak of indifference and historical and cultural misinformation.
