Word: thera
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Perhaps not. Last week a U. S. oceanographer announced that what may be a completely intact Minoan city was unearthed recently on the Aegean island of Thera, now called Santorin. The discovery could well substantiate the most intriguing of all Atlantis theories-that Plato was right but simply mislocated Atlantis, which was actually an island kingdom comprising Thera, Crete and other Aegean islands...
...That theory was proposed in 1960 by University of Athens Seismologist Anghelos Galanopoulos, who believes that Plato misread by a factor of 10 the dimensions of Atlantis and the date of its destruction given in an Egyptian manuscript. Dividing by 10, Galanopoulos came up with an area roughly encompassing Thera and Crete; similarly reducing Platos date to 900 years before Solon, he moved the destruction of Atlantis forward to about 1490 B. C. At about that time, a well-documented volcanic eruption plunged large portions of Thera into the sea, rained lethal vapors and debris on Crete 75 miles...
...this fascinated U. S. Marine Geologist James W. Mavor Jr. of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who sailed to Thera last year in the institute's research vessel, Chain. When his seismic profiles of the island showed geophysical conformations that seemed to match Plato's description of Atlantis, Mavor organized a full-fledged expedition headed by Greek Archaeologist Spyridon Marinates and including Professor Emily Vermeule, research fellow at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. Shortly after the diggers arrived, they detected artifacts buried in a 2,500-ft. swath across the island. Digging nine trenches, the group...
Drowned Egyptians. Thera's eruption may have had even more far-reaching effects. It is thought by some to have affected the Exodus and caused the ten plagues of Egypt 450 miles to the southeast. Professor Anghelos Galanopoulos, head of the Athens observatory's seismological institute, believes that the three days of darkness that oppressed Biblical Egypt may well have been caused by volcanic ash. The fallout of ash was probably heavy enough to ruin crops and cause famine by making the land uncultivatable...
...portions of Thera collapsed and sank, Galanopoulos suggests, the sea rushed in to fill the void, lowering the water on all eastern Mediterranean shores. As a result, a narrow bridge of land separating the Sea of Reeds from the Mediterranean temporarily widened -just as the Jews making the Exodus were about to flee across it. Shortly afterward, the waters that had surged toward Thera raced back in a huge wave that caught the pursuing Egyptian troops on the land bridge and swept them to their deaths...