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Travel - Revisiting Atlantis

An Aegean cruise to the islands of Crete and Santorini

A great tectonic spasm set the earth trembling and giant waves swept across the land. According to Plato (ca 400 BC) a land "Larger than Libya and Asia put together... was swallowed up by the sea and disappeared." And so began the mystery of the lost city of Atlantis – a mystery that continues to fascinate historians, archaeologists, and scientists to this day. It's a story that intrigued me long before Betty and I boarded the small Greek cruise ship Galaxias and set out on a tour of the Aegean Islands.

Egyptian scribes first recounted the tale to the Athenian ruler Solon in about 600 BC. Two hundred years later Plato picked up the story and in the Critias he describes Atlantis as two islands, one long and one round – a sweet country of art and flowers, united by one culture and rule. He put it somewhere out in the Atlantic but the story had undergone many tellings, and probably many changes, before reaching him. Today most scholars believe Plato's account is based on a real event – he just got a few details wrong. The lost city was probably swallowed up by the Aegean Sea rather than the Atlantic Ocean, and as we headed for the island of Crete the story of Atlantis was on everyone's mind.

The Galaxias dropped anchor in Herakleon harbour on the north coast of Crete and we set off for a day of prowling through the ruins of Knossos. The site has been occupied since Paleolithic time but around 2500 BC sea-born wanderers from the East arrived with new skills that raised Crete from stone-age stagnation into the age of metals. These industrious peace-loving people, who later became known as the Minoans, built elaborate unfortified palaces, made intricately decorated pottery, introduced the wheel, and developed a form of writing. After a catastrophic earthquake in 1700 BC the Minoans rebuilt their cities on Crete and entered the golden age of the "New Palaces" during which their merchant ships dominated trade and their artisans set the standard for metalwork, pottery, and art for the entire Aegean World. During this time the Palace of Minos at Knossos became the centre of political power.

Almost nothing was known about this great pre-Greek civilization before the pioneer archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans of Oxford came to Crete in 1900 and began excavating the Knossos ruins. Using his personal fortune and doggedly pursuing the project for most of his life Evans unearthed and restored the great Palace of Minos. Some purists have criticized his methods, arguing that the restoration goes too far. But Evans is, nevertheless, recognized for his scholarship and imagination. His reconstruction of the Palace is a tribute to the grandeur of the Minoan world and has made Knossos one of the most visited tourist sites in all of Greece.

We joined a local tour guide who led us through the labyrinth of apartments, colonnades, staircases and light wells that ramble over more than six acres and rise to a height of three storeys. The unfortified palace of Minos was remodelled and embellished by a succession of rulers to become one of the most elaborate structures of ancient time. Narrow hallways still contain the huge clay pithoi or storage jars that were once filled with olive oil, wine, and grains. Many of its 1,500 rooms, including the Queens apartments, had an efficient plumbing system using terra-cotta pipes to bring in fresh water and dispose of waste. Archaeologists estimate that the Palace and surrounding city may once have held 100,000 Minoan people. Suddenly, in about 1450 BC, it all came to an end.

Excavations along the coast of Crete reveal damage to the Minoan cities on a scale that could only have been caused by a massive natural disaster. The Palace of Minos, though damaged, was one of the few buildings to escape total annihilation. Was it an earthquake? A tidal wave? A volcanic eruption? Was this in fact Atlantis? We tossed around the possibilities as we headed back to the Galaxias for dinner, another browse through the ship’s library, and a night’s sleep.

The clatter of the ship’s anchor being raised woke us at dawn and in our bottom-class stateroom the throb and vibration of the engines made dozing impossible. From the dark recesses of the ship’s belly we made our way up onto deck in time to watch the harbour of Herakleon, where we had spent the night, disappear against Crete's long northern coastline.

It was still early and the first cup of coffee hadn’t jolted me into full consciousness when Santorini came into view. The distant sea cliffs were capped by a brilliant rim of white and my sleep-fogged mind told me "it must have snowed last night". Not unreasonable if I had been in Whistler but in the middle of the Aegean Sea in August snow made no sense at all. But there are many things about Santorini, my favorite Greek island, that challenge the imagination.

As the Galaxias drew closer what I took to be snow morphed into clusters of brilliant-white buildings perched atop the cliff. The cliff itself, no longer a featureless precipice, became a multicoloured succession of lava flows, volcanic ash, and pyroclastic deposits that rise 270 metres above the ocean. Santorini, or Thira as it was known in classical times, is a small crescent-shaped island about 90 km north of Crete. It is all that remains of a once circular volcanic island known as Strogyle.

In 1450 BC Strogyle blew its top in one of the most catastrophic eruptions of all time. The centre of the volcano collapsed into a circular depression or caldera that now forms the harbour where the Galaxias is preparing to drop anchor. In front of us the towering cliffs on the inside of the crescent are part of the caldera wall, and the gentle slope on the other side of the island is part of the original surface of Strogyle. Resting on that ancient surface, buried beneath a thick layer of volcanic ash, are the remains of a village whose architecture, pottery, and art-work are clearly Minoan – similar in every respect to what we saw at Knossos.

A small motor launch pulls alongside and we line up with the other tourists to go ashore at Skala Fira. It takes several trips and there is pushing and shoving as people jockey for position. I pick up the odd word of German, Italian, and French "pardon! pardon!" as they elbow their way through. (European lift-line manners!) At the jetty the crowd surges over to a staging area where the multilingual chatter is joined by the shouts of Greek donkey drivers trying valiantly to boost overweight tourists onto spindly-legged mounts in a scene of comic confusion. We opt to walk.

After the sedentary decadence of the ship where lavish meals are augmented by equally lavish mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack bars it feels good to stretch the legs. The path with its 600 stone steps winds up the cliff past bright red volcanic bluffs and onto the patios of immaculate white shops and restaurants clinging to the rim of the crater. We arrive long before the first donkeys, order a cool drink on a patio with a view, and settle down to watch the procession winding its way slowly up the trail. I swear the docile, overworked donkeys get some devious pleasure in scraping the knees of their burdens on every possible stone wall.

Looking down from the crater rim into the great caldera that forms Santorini's harbour the Galaxias is like a small toy boat. Beyond her, near the centre of the caldera, a wisp of steam drifts from Metaxa crater on the island of Nea Kameni which rose out of the sea in AD 1720 and is still active – a small postscript to Plato's tale of Atlantis.

Except for casting his story in the wrong ocean it seems Plato got things pretty much right. The two islands of Atlantis, one long and one round, are a good fit for the long skinny island of Crete and the round volcanic island of Strogyle. Excavations have shown that both islands were part of an advanced Minoan civilization – one culture and one rule. The 1450 BC eruption of Strogyle correlates with the destruction of the Minoan world based on archeology, and an eruption of that size and type would have inflicted enormous damage. Most of Strogyle was either pulverized or engulfed by the sea and Crete, only 90 km away, must have been broadsided by enormous tsunamis that swept high into the interior of the island. It all seems to fit.

I order another drink, convinced that our perch on the caldera rim of Santorini's harbour is as close as we'll ever get to the lost city of Atlantis.