Secrets of the Dead (2000) s08e02 Episode Script
Sinking Atlantis
5,000 years ago, the great civilization of the Minoans flourished on the island of Crete.
Centuries before the Greeks built the Parthenon, The Minoan artists recorded their achievements With exquisite carvings and beautiful frescoes.
The Minoans were the first Europeans to use writing.
But then, at the height of their power, They were wiped from the pages of history.
Their disappearance is still one of the ancient world's Greatest mysteries.
Some thought the Minoans were slaughtered by invaders.
Others, that a volcanic eruption had engulfed them.
But now a team of scientists Is looking for more definitive answers.
Their research is casting doubt on previous theories And unearthing new evidence of an unexpected natural disaster.
Man: you spend a lot of time looking for something, And then when you find it, you wish you hadn't.
Did the Minoans' terrible fate Give rise to the famous myth of Atlantis, The ancient city that vanished beneath the waves? More than 2,000 years ago, The Greek historian Plato wrote about Atlantis, The fabled civilization that was swallowed by the sea.
But the origins of Plato's story have never been identified.
It is only recently that some archaeologists Have begun to believe the legend may have started here on Crete.
They are hoping that scientific investigation Can provide an actual link to Plato's ancient folk memory.
It's an ambitious goal, Given that our modern understanding of the Minoans is sparse, Culled in large part from Greek myths About monsters and human sacrifice.
Archaeologist Sandy MacGillivray Has been spellbound by the beauty of Minoan art and architecture For 25 years.
He's always wondered how such an advanced culture Disappeared so mysteriously.
Sandy is on his way to explore ancient mines In the center of the island.
For hundreds of years, they were thought to be the labyrinth, The Minoan home of the legendary minotaur.
Greek tales describe the creature As half-Bull, half-Man.
It was imprisoned in the great maze by king Minos.
It fed on human flesh.
There were all kinds of stories Of hauntings and weird happenings in here.
It's still a place associated with doom and death.
The minotaur had particular tastes.
It liked to consume its human prey alive.
MacGillivray: to keep the minotaur fed, Minos exacted a tribute of 7 maids and 7 youths From the Athenians, And once you entered the labyrinth, You never left the labyrinth.
At the peak of king Minos' power, Athens was just a small settlement, Dwarfed by the Minoan empire.
The minotaur myth may have been created by the ancient Greeks As a way of expressing their fear or resentment For their powerful neighbors.
But archaeological remains found at the Minoan capital of Knossos Hint at a grisly reality behind the myth.
MacGillivray: one of the most telling and horrifying deposits Was a deposit recovered in the town of Knossos, Up along the royal road, And that was these cannibalized youths.
The analysis of these bones from this burnt destruction deposit Strongly suggested that they'd been hacked up In order to take the flesh off in order to eat them.
This cannibalistic aspect of the Minoans Is probably one of the things that was recalled When the Greeks first arrived in Crete.
Fear and loathing at Knossos.
The dark stories and evidence of cannibalism Alongside such beautiful buildings and artwork Seemed to indicate a strangely enigmatic society.
British archaeologist sir Arthur Evans First began exploring their secrets in 1900.
Evans started excavating near the modern village of Knossos.
His finds of a sophisticated bronze age civilization Astonished the world.
While the ancient Greeks were living as barbarian warriors, These people were building magnificent palaces.
Knossos was the largest Minoan city.
A masterpiece of ancient town planning, Its temples and granaries were connected by the first paved roads in Europe, Built more than 1,000 years before the romans.
The Minoan empire stretched wide.
Archaeologists have discovered settlements throughout Crete As well as on other Aegean islands And parts of mainland turkey.
The Minoans shipped their intricate artifacts and pottery As far as Spain and Mesopotamia.
They were masters of the sea.
Their vast reach and influence Rivaled that of the ancient Egyptians.
Minoan artists produced the first great treasures Of ancient Europe.
This tiny gold seal is so small, it must have been created Using some form of magnifying lens.
This molding is less than an inch high, Yet it contains a portrait of an entire Minoan town.
Another masterpiece is the harvester vase.
You've got a little choir of men with skullcaps on, Whose mouths are open.
The reeds that some of them are holding, You can almost hear them blowing in the wind, Rustling against each other.
These pieces are symphonic in every way.
It's a revolution in art.
As Evans excavated the ruins of Knossos, He felt certain he had uncovered the palace of king Minos.
He even imagined he'd found the royal throne.
But Sandy MacGillivray thinks Evans misread the evidence.
He believes Knossos was not a palace but a temple, Carefully constructed to harness the magical power of the sun.
In 2001, sandy realized that each of these doorways Aligns with the rising sun On different key days of the year.
What we're looking at here is the solar temple.
Like the Egyptians, The Minoans worshiped the changing cycles of the sun, moon, and stars.
What we have here, then, is essentially a theater of the senses.
You can start off with complete blackness, And then you can fling open these doors At that moment of sunrise And experience that beginning of something new.
And in the winter, the sun comes through On the winter solstice And illuminates the throne.
But it's unclear who sat on the throne.
Evans believed it must have been a powerful male ruler, Like the Egyptian pharaohs.
But although there are myths about king Minos, There is no evidence of kings in Minoan art.
Instead, there are celebrations of striking female figures, Like this one found at Knossos.
Sandy believes she may have been a snake priestess, Perhaps part of a fertility order That wielded religious power And possibly also political influence in Minoan society.
The Minoans left many tantalizing clues about their world.
Their written language, called linear a, Has only recently been decoded.
Surprisingly, it shares DNA Not with other Mediterranean languages But with hieroglyphs from the Persians in the middle east.
Sandy believes the words tell us far more about the Minoans Than their art.
MacGillivray: a decipherment for linear a Has given us a language for this Cretan civilization Which is akin to the early language of Iran, Which found its way from the highlands of Iran All the way to India on one side And to Minoan Crete on the other side.
their origins seem to explain Why the Minoans were so different from the ancient Greeks, Who succeeded them.
Their language and religion were more Asian than European.
But it doesn't explain why 3,500 years ago, The Minoans disappeared.
Although there are some indications That the Minoans were attacked by armed invaders From the Greek mainland, Records of a nearby volcanic eruption Seem like a more promising place to start.
The island of Santorini, Which lies 70 miles north of Knossos, Is ground zero for the volcano theory.
Today, the jagged cliffs and beautiful scenery Draw countless tourists.
Many fail to realize they are vacationing On a highly explosive volcano.
In ancient times, it was called Thera.
The Minoans built the thriving city of Akroteri In the volcano's shadow.
It was discovered in 1967, Buried on the slopes of the vast crater.
In its heyday, Akroteri Was as wealthy and highly developed As the settlements on Crete.
Volcanologist Floyd McCoy Has been studying the geology and history of Santorini For 20 years.
McCoy: if you take a look at the wall paintings that have been discovered here, They are portraying their landscape.
It's a happy landscape.
Animals bouncing around and people picking saffron.
saffron was a valuable commodity In the classical world.
It was prized as a spice And it was also used for medicinal purposes.
The Minoans documented the saffron harvest On their frescoes.
McCoy: they were showing a nice, nice lifestyle, A comfortable one.
It's a pity it was all destroyed.
the Minoans had built their prosperous city On one of the most dangerous islands on earth.
Around 1,600 BC, Akroteri was shaken By a violent earthquake.
Some time later, the eruption occurred.
And suddenly, this thing exploded.
this was fire and brimstone Of epic proportions.
The huge volcano blasted gas, ash, and rock 25 miles into the stratosphere.
Evidence of the volcano's power Can be found all around Santorini.
Some of the deposits are more than 100 feet deep.
There, in that cliff face, all 4 layers representing The 4 major faces of this huge, dramatic eruption.
The first layer that we see is that brown layer at the bottom, That granular brown layer.
That's pumice.
Pumice is frothy rock.
It represents magma frozen in place, A frozen explosion.
the 2 layers above Are testimony to the lethal impact of Thera's eruption.
This is the debris left by pyroclastic flows.
McCoy: pyroclastic flows hot gas material That comes up and flows laterally across the landscape, Sometimes at supersonic speeds.
Hot, hot gases.
these gases were forced out By massive explosions in the heart of the volcano.
When the initial magma surge Erupted out of the Theran caldera, It left behind a vast, empty chamber.
The surface above the chamber collapsed, Creating a gaping cavity.
Then, the sea rushed in.
McCoy: magma and water do not mix.
They make an explosion.
The entire Aegean sea is pouring into this event, Mixing with new magma coming up, And the explosion was tremendous, huge.
And from that come these pyroclastic flows.
the destructive force was incomprehensible.
The third layer of the deposit is a 33-Foot wall of ash From a single flow.
Above it lies the fourth and final layer.
It started to rain.
Torrential rains came down.
And then all this loose ash and pumice on the surface Started to move down slow.
That's what we call debris flows.
And then it was over.
the thriving Minoan settlement on Santorini Was buried under the huge mounds of ash.
But did the eruption also obliterate Crete, 70 miles to the south? Floyd and his colleagues found ash deposits On the sea bed surrounding the island, Certainly an ominous sign.
We calculated the amount, the volume of this material, Which is how we figure out how explosive an eruption was.
It came out something like Krakatoa.
"Wow," we said.
when Krakatoa, The volcanic island that lies between java and Sumatra, Erupted in 1883, The explosion was heard 2,000 miles away.
The volcano claimed 36,000 lives.
But if Thera was that powerful, There should be widespread evidence of its eruption.
And there is.
A search turns up Theran ash 500 miles away in the black sea.
Archaeologist Stuart Dunn plots the known deposits.
We've put together a database of all these ash thicknesses, Recording their locations and recording the thickness.
each numbered triangle Represents a deposit of ash from Thera.
The location and thickness of these residues Allows Dunn to calculate how many millions of tons of material Were blasted across the region.
We concluded that the eruption was very, very much larger Than had been previously thought.
We were all wrong.
This was highly explosive.
Now we're up to 10 times the explositivity of Krakatoa.
We really are talking about the largest volcanic event in human history in Europe.
the volcano spewed out huge plumes of ash.
When the dense clouds headed towards Crete, The Minoans must have thought The gods were turning against them.
Imagine this ash coming over the island.
And we know it happened.
It blackened the air.
It blackened the blue sky for several days, probably, And that is pretty bad for people living with nature.
until recently, many archaeologists Believed that ash from Thera had smothered all life on Crete.
But although the explosion was huge, Prevailing winds carried much of the ash Away from the island.
The deposits that did reach Crete Were not deep enough to have destroyed the Minoans.
But if the ash hadn't wiped them out, what had? Sandy MacGillivray hopes he can find out.
He's been excavating the Minoan coastal town of Palaikastro On eastern Crete.
The extent of the ruins suggests This was the second-Largest Minoan settlement on the island.
Home to 5,000 people, it covered the whole of this slope, From the mountainside to the sea.
Palaikastro was a thriving community, With many skilled workers.
Its paved roads were laid out In a carefully executed grid pattern.
Today, the hill where the town stood Is eroding into the sea.
As the soil crumbles, it reveals A chaotically-Mixed layer of sediment That may contain hints about the fate of the Minoans.
MacGillivray: I used to come down here to the beach, And I would see these gravel deposits.
We had Theran ash, we had pottery, And there was building debris.
There was all this chaos.
And brought a number of specialists up here And said, "well, can you explain How this gravel got up here?" And one of them suggested that there was a river flowing up here, And I thought, "a river? "Why would a Minoan build their house in the middle of a river And how could a river run over a hilltop?" That made no sense whatsoever to me, And I thought, "let's get people to really investigate this properly.
" sandy has never seen anything like this mixed layer, So he calls in Hendrik bruins, A soil scientist from Ben-Gurion university in Israel.
Hendrik specializes in dating and identifying Unusual layers of sediment.
Bruins: look here.
We have stone, pottery, And lots of lumps of volcanic ash.
This is one lump.
This is another lump.
these chaotic layers are very different From what Hendrik would expect to find On a shoreline like this.
This is, from a sedimentary point of view, This is impossible to get, let's say, by an earthquake, And it's impossible to get by Natural archaeological stratification.
so what could have caused the untidy deposit? Hendrik takes samples, hoping a microscopic examination Will reveal clues about how the layer was formed.
So this is the hardened block Made from the sediment which we took in situ at the promontory, The soft, brittle material, Hardened afterwards.
Here we have the slide, the thin section That was made from the block.
under the microscope, Hendrik makes an unexpected find.
Bruins: we were really very, very thrilled When we saw foraminifera in these deposits.
foraminifera are tiny marine organisms, Usually found on the sea bed.
It's unusual to find them on land, Even in soil close to the water's edge.
And they're not the only undersea creatures Hendrik discovers.
There are also coral and algae in the sample.
These come from below the sea level And in order to deposit them in that level where we found them at a promontory, I mean, it has to be scooped up by something.
It has to be lifted up to a much higher level Where the sea normally never comes.
there is only one natural force That could have lifted these organisms off the sea floor And onto the headland A sudden, powerful, and devastating wave.
In 2004, the Indian ocean tsunami stunned the world.
It killed 230,000 people and wiped out entire coastlines.
Could the same thing have happened to the Minoans, 3,500 years ago? Is the Palaikastro beach deposit The footprint of a massive tsunami? Here you can see bits of paving.
sandy calls in leading tsunami expert Costas Synolakis To corroborate Hendrik's findings.
Costas has studied tsunami deposits From the 2004 wave And from other, smaller waves around the world.
As soon as they reach the beach, They find newly exposed Minoan pottery fragments Mixed in with the gravel.
These are cattle bones here.
You can see floor plaster and wall plaster.
You can see building material And you see a lot of typical pottery.
Ok.
Have a look at this deposit here, Costas.
There's the conical cup sitting right there.
It's 5 meters above Minoan sea level.
by comparison, the waves That hit Sri Lanka in 2004 Were estimated at 5 to 10 meters high, And they killed 30,000 people.
Synolakis: when sandy invited me to come out here And look at some of the evidence, I was very skeptical, but nonetheless, I was really keen to see what sandy had.
Sandy, I mean, if this is all the Minoan deposit, Must have been something really massive.
I mean, something of a scale that would have just Not even started thinking about.
What happened here? Costas wants to look further inland For more signs of damage.
The main ruins of Palaikastro are 300 yards From the chaotically-Mixed layers at the water's edge.
Now that they know what to look for, They see striking evidence of tsunami damage.
We find some walls entirely missing.
We find Entirely missing? Yeah.
Well, like the late Minoan I wall Along the bottom there is gone.
About half of the building is gone.
And, of course, this is what we see in modern tsunamis.
We call this the blowout.
The sea comes in, tsunami comes in, Blows out the walls.
If the building is strong enough, the side walls will survive.
But the walls facing the ocean, they're just going to collapse.
MacGillivray: all of a sudden, a lot of the deposits Began making sense to us, Because we had these buildings pulled away, We had the fronts of buildings missing, We had buildings razed right down to foundation level.
like the victims of the 2004 tsunami, The Minoans in Palaikastro Would have had no warning of the approaching waves.
Costas believes that with the right information, He can build a full picture of the scale And impact of the tsunami.
The first step is to create a 3-Dimensional map of the bay.
Costas uses sonar to plot the bay's contours.
The shape of the sea bed Would have influenced the speed and height of the tsunami As it approached the land.
Though the sands may have shifted since Minoan times, The data will still provide a useful approximation.
The next day, Costas extends his search back onto firm ground.
He wants to explore the plains around Palaikastro To find out exactly how far inland the tsunami traveled.
First stop is a new road construction project More than half a mile from the shore.
That's a seashell.
That's outrageous.
I don't believe this.
And it's all exposed.
And, look, there's more.
That looks to me like the rim of a hemispherical cup.
The period of Thera eruption.
the items are far inland And high above sea level.
Looks like we're at 31.
46 meters.
Can't believe we just That's about right.
We're cooking.
We are cooking.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha! the new finds are making a strong case For a tsunami, And the theory also provides the impetus To reexamine old evidence.
Environmental scientist Ania Sarpocky Has kept soil samples from 20 years of Palaikastro excavations.
She is now going back to check them For signs of the microscopic marine organisms That were found at the beach.
Sarpocky: in this particular sample, we have found foraminifera.
Oh, my goodness.
Is that what they look like? Sarpocky: uh-Huh.
Ania's finds are an important confirmation.
All the pieces are falling into place.
Synolakis: what Ania has found is extremely exciting.
Ania's foraminifera.
The wall.
And in the debris layer, Well, there's no other alternative explanation That can simultaneously explain all these findings Other than the fact that the tsunami was really big, Much bigger than we thought.
Came through.
Destroyed the town.
And pretty much covered most of the plain behind me.
the next question is what caused the wave That destroyed Palaikastro.
Tsunamis are often generated by enormous sub-Sea earthquakes, Like the one that created the 2004 wave.
Could such an earthquake have caused the Minoan disaster, Or was it generated by the Theran eruption? Hendrik bruins hopes this single fragment of cow bone From the Palaikastro shoreline Will provide the answer.
What I would like to see is, first of all, That the bone would give a date, a radiocarbon date, That is similar to the date for the Minoan Santorini eruption, Because then we have very, very hard scientific evidence That we're talking about the same time.
So if this radiocarbon date that comes from this bone Would be similar to the radiocarbon date Of the Santorini eruption, Then it's very, very important scientific evidence.
That's one piece.
the radiocarbon dating test Will take at least a week.
Meanwhile, the team sets out to explore the extent Of the wave's impact beyond Palaikastro.
They search along the north coast, Where any tsunami generated by Thera Would've struck the island.
But centuries of erosion have erased any evidence of wave damage.
Initial attempts near Palaikastro Turn up little, So they travel 30 miles west to the town of Mallia.
These are ruins of what was once The third largest Minoan palace on Crete.
As was typical, the town had no protective walls.
The Minoans were the strongest naval power in the ancient world And relied on their ships for defense.
Not far from the shore, the team finds a layer of pottery and building debris Similar to the one at Palaikastro.
Buried in the dirt is further evidence Of marine life where it shouldn't be.
Bruins: wow.
Look at that.
Man: very good.
Very good.
Very good.
So this strengthens our working hypothesis That this is a tsunami deposit.
The significance of is that it adds tremendous credibility To the deposits that we have found in Palaikastro, Right out in the promontory.
It's much more useful to have good deposits That are the distance of 20 miles apart from each other, 30 miles apart, Than having 2 deposits that are next to each other, Because then we have a better geographical constraint And that helps us identify how wide the wave is, What was the width of the wall of water that came towards Crete? at this point, they know the wave Was at least 30 miles wide.
But there are still more excavations to explore.
The next day, they reach Amnissos, The main port for the Minoan ships.
4,000 years ago, a tranquil villa Nestled among the olive groves on this idyllic coast.
It was decorated with frescoes That celebrated the natural beauty of the island.
But at some point, the villa was destroyed And the frescoes were torn from the wells.
When the site was excavated, large fragments of pumice Bearing the chemical fingerprint of Thera Were found in the ruins.
This petrified volcanic froth Is too heavy to have been carried In the Theran ash cloud, But it could've arrived by sea.
High in the hills above the villa, Sandy, Hendrik, and Costas Are looking for more samples of the Theran pumice.
MacGillivray: well, if we can find some pumice up here.
Put your eyes where your mouth is.
Let's try to find.
Let's try to find some pumice.
they are searching 60 feet above sea level.
All the pebbles.
This is it.
That, obviously, is volcanic.
See if it sparkles.
But it's round, this? Yeah, this is This is absolutely pumice.
It's not enough.
Do you realize what this means for The height of the tsunami? Ok, is there any other way That these pieces of These little, tiny pieces of pumice got up here? How else could the pumice get here? It's not a souvenir.
Synolakis: you could get destruction down there With a wave that's maybe 3 meters high.
Who knows how strong the house was? But finding pumice up here is unbelievable.
I mean, this is huge.
MacGillivray: there's tons of this stuff up here.
This is outrageous.
As a child, there was a big anthill At one end of the garden, And we used to go with the garden hose And wash them off, And that keeps coming back somewhere in my memory.
And I keep thinking that wave had an effect Like just washing ants off an anthill And sweeping them out to sea.
It's a terrifying thing.
Those ants never had a chance.
with evidence accumulating For an island-Wide tsunami, Hendrik is eager to get the results From the radiocarbon dating test of the cow bone.
Only then will they know for sure If the tsunami was caused by the Theran volcano on Santorini Or by an underwater earthquake.
Oh, my goodness.
Ok.
the results finally arrive.
The date is 1,600 b.
C.
, An exact match with the Theran eruption.
You know, the The cattle bones, they are of the same age As the Santorini eruption, And it proves that also, our chaotic tsunami deposit Has also in radiocarbon terms The same age as the Santorini eruption, Which is superb.
now certain that the volcano Did in fact cause the tsunami, The men can begin to calculate Exactly how massive the wave had been.
A reference point for destructive power Is the 2004 tsunami.
Yes.
We've created a monster.
from his survey measurements, Costas maps the wave's assault on the surrounding land masses.
Red and green peaks show the height of the water.
Synolakis: the size of the wave here, Just to give you in a comparison, Is equivalent to what the wave looked like Off Sri Lanka and off Thailand.
If you know how many people Died in Thailand, how many people died in Sri Lanka.
I mean, Thailand, it's 20 meters.
It's the same size wave right here.
20 meters.
the initial wave was huge, But even more disturbing, the simulation shows It was followed by others.
It's having It's having a party.
when the caldera collapsed, It pushed several walls of water into the sea, Like a pebble dropping into a pond.
The water ricocheted around the Aegean islands In a deadly game of tsunami pinball.
As volcanic ash darkened the sky.
The Minoans were hit by wave after wave.
Wow.
This is it's coming in.
No.
Yes.
What are the intervals between Synolakis: well, let's Let's have a look how This is about 33 minutes.
And now we have Bruins: the first wave coming in.
And now you have the second one.
And that's at 46 minutes.
And then you have another wave In about half an hour later, Which is not as big but has to be terrifying, Because by that time, everything I mean, the people have run away.
Maybe some people are coming back To help the wounded, To try to find family members, And then this other wave comes in and sort of finishes the job.
This is horrifying.
Synolakis: yeah.
It's absolutely horrifying.
But it doesn't narrator: over 25 years, Sandy has grown to respect and admire the Minoans.
Now he is forced to truly contemplate How many of them died.
My reaction to seeing that model Was a bit like seeing Watching 9/11.
Because I just I hate disasters.
It's like when you spend a lot of time looking for something, And then when you find it, you wish you hadn't because it becomes too real And you begin to feel the experience.
This is life, this is people Just being washed out to sea, bashed around, Knocked against walls.
Ships coming ashore.
There's a whole There's a whole instant that flashes through your head.
Striking observation that I've made Just talking to people all over the world Tsunamis.
Whether it is Nicaragua or whether it is Sri Lanka Or whether it is in the Philippines, They tell you about the noise.
Tsunami comes in and they tell you that it sounds like Some people say like falling rain.
Others tell you that it's like an airplane landing.
This impression I mean, this What you hear Time and time again Irrespective of where you are.
The feeling is that this is the end of the world.
Once a tsunami starts climbing up on dry land, It's moving at a speed of maybe anywhere between 10 to 20 miles per hour.
It's almost like being in a 20,000 mile per hour wind.
Nothing can stop it.
It's not even a question of being scared.
The moment that you see the tsunami, most people freeze.
I'm trying to think, how would the Minoan Have reacted to this phenomenon, which is These people love the sea.
I mean, they worship the sea.
And here is the sea that's turning against them.
Once they come up on the hill And they look back and they look at the destruction, How can they ever go back and live in the same place? It's probably cursed.
there are no written records Of the Theran tsunami, No figures for the death and destruction it caused.
But the 2004 tsunami can give us Some idea of its devastating impact.
The Minoans, they're so confident in their navy That they're living in unprotected cities All along the coastline.
These were the major population centers.
That's where people are living.
Now, you go to Banda Aceh And you find that the mortality rate is 80%.
If we're looking at a similar mortality rate in Crete, That's the end of the Minoans.
the tsunami destroyed all the major Minoan towns.
Their great civilization was brought to its knees.
Never again would these enigmatic people Dominate the Mediterranean.
Archaeologists are only now beginning to understand What happened in the decades that followed.
One of the most remarkable clues Is a small statue that was found in Palaikastro.
It was discovered in an archaeological layer Deposited 100 years after the disaster.
MacGillivray: he's made of ivory tusks, gold, He has a serpentinite head, And he is one of the great masterpieces of Minoan art.
His cuticles are even carved.
He's given pulsating veins.
The sculptor wanted him to be alive.
the attention to detail was astounding, And the statue was magnificent by any standards, But it was in terrible condition when it was found.
It had been badly charred, shattered, And scattered around the building that housed it, Both inside and out.
This was a valuable piece.
Anybody who had this in his possession would've been rich, But they did not care.
They wanted to destroy the statue.
Somebody picked up the statue from its base And brought it outside.
He took the statue and smashed the face Into, probably, this side of the wall And made the stone head fall And have the torso and the arms drop in front of the steps of the shrine And threw in the legs in the burning house.
this was more than a random act of vandalism.
It was ritualized violence Against a powerful symbol of Minoan culture.
Driessen: they really went for the face, And so we see that in all different kinds of civilizations Egyptian or roman.
When they go for the face, there is something symbolic involved.
They want to destroy everything this statue stood for.
additional signs of such deliberate destruction Have been found in other places on the island.
At Chania in western Crete, An excavation at the heart of the modern town Has revealed evidence of ancient arson.
These are the stones that are in such a condition Because of the strong fire.
the hallmarks of fire are clear, But the cause of the blazes is still being debated.
Are these signs of internal strife Or external enemy invasion? Archaeologist Maria Vlasaki Believes the answer lies in an unusual cemetery in Chania.
The bodies have been dated to the period Of widespread unrest in the Minoan world.
Vlasaki: these are warrior graves.
They are single burials, something that is in opposition With the traditional Cretan Minoan customs.
Vlasaki: they have the age of between 24 to 30.
They are tall, robust.
They look to be invaders.
similar bodies have been found Near Knossos as well.
Their weapons were not Minoan.
They resembled those used by the ancient Peloponnese Greeks.
They have a lot of weapons.
Long swords like the ones that are In Knossos and in Peloponnese.
the invaders from the Greek mainland Slashed and burned their way across Crete, Overwhelming the weakened Minoans.
Sandy MacGillivray believes the tsunami Not only left he Minoans ripe for an attack, It gave the Greeks an important military advantage.
MacGillivray: their traditional homeland Is on the southern shores of the gulf of Corinth.
Tsunami cannot get into the gulf of Corinth.
To get into there, you have to go All the way around to the west to a little, narrow opening.
So the Mycenaean Greeks up there Are probably the only people left, Maybe even in the eastern Mediterranean, with a navy.
This is power.
within a generation of their arrival, The Greeks had completely conquered Crete.
The last embers of Minoan culture flickered out.
At long last, the story of the Minoan disappearance Has been unearthed.
5,000 years after it hit, an epic natural disaster Can be blamed for their collapse.
This is a major discovery now because what it's doing is it's Helping us to rewrite a chapter in Minoan archaeology, In the history of the Minoans.
This is absolutely exciting.
I mean, it's just Even in my wildest dream, When I started thinking of becoming a scientist, Did I ever think that I would be working on understanding The demise of the Minoans And what happened back then, the second millennium b.
C.
a wave that washed away an empire Is strikingly reminiscent of a mystical city That sank beneath the waves, And though we may never know for sure if Crete was Atlantis, We at least have an explanation For the downfall of Europe's first great civilization.
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Centuries before the Greeks built the Parthenon, The Minoan artists recorded their achievements With exquisite carvings and beautiful frescoes.
The Minoans were the first Europeans to use writing.
But then, at the height of their power, They were wiped from the pages of history.
Their disappearance is still one of the ancient world's Greatest mysteries.
Some thought the Minoans were slaughtered by invaders.
Others, that a volcanic eruption had engulfed them.
But now a team of scientists Is looking for more definitive answers.
Their research is casting doubt on previous theories And unearthing new evidence of an unexpected natural disaster.
Man: you spend a lot of time looking for something, And then when you find it, you wish you hadn't.
Did the Minoans' terrible fate Give rise to the famous myth of Atlantis, The ancient city that vanished beneath the waves? More than 2,000 years ago, The Greek historian Plato wrote about Atlantis, The fabled civilization that was swallowed by the sea.
But the origins of Plato's story have never been identified.
It is only recently that some archaeologists Have begun to believe the legend may have started here on Crete.
They are hoping that scientific investigation Can provide an actual link to Plato's ancient folk memory.
It's an ambitious goal, Given that our modern understanding of the Minoans is sparse, Culled in large part from Greek myths About monsters and human sacrifice.
Archaeologist Sandy MacGillivray Has been spellbound by the beauty of Minoan art and architecture For 25 years.
He's always wondered how such an advanced culture Disappeared so mysteriously.
Sandy is on his way to explore ancient mines In the center of the island.
For hundreds of years, they were thought to be the labyrinth, The Minoan home of the legendary minotaur.
Greek tales describe the creature As half-Bull, half-Man.
It was imprisoned in the great maze by king Minos.
It fed on human flesh.
There were all kinds of stories Of hauntings and weird happenings in here.
It's still a place associated with doom and death.
The minotaur had particular tastes.
It liked to consume its human prey alive.
MacGillivray: to keep the minotaur fed, Minos exacted a tribute of 7 maids and 7 youths From the Athenians, And once you entered the labyrinth, You never left the labyrinth.
At the peak of king Minos' power, Athens was just a small settlement, Dwarfed by the Minoan empire.
The minotaur myth may have been created by the ancient Greeks As a way of expressing their fear or resentment For their powerful neighbors.
But archaeological remains found at the Minoan capital of Knossos Hint at a grisly reality behind the myth.
MacGillivray: one of the most telling and horrifying deposits Was a deposit recovered in the town of Knossos, Up along the royal road, And that was these cannibalized youths.
The analysis of these bones from this burnt destruction deposit Strongly suggested that they'd been hacked up In order to take the flesh off in order to eat them.
This cannibalistic aspect of the Minoans Is probably one of the things that was recalled When the Greeks first arrived in Crete.
Fear and loathing at Knossos.
The dark stories and evidence of cannibalism Alongside such beautiful buildings and artwork Seemed to indicate a strangely enigmatic society.
British archaeologist sir Arthur Evans First began exploring their secrets in 1900.
Evans started excavating near the modern village of Knossos.
His finds of a sophisticated bronze age civilization Astonished the world.
While the ancient Greeks were living as barbarian warriors, These people were building magnificent palaces.
Knossos was the largest Minoan city.
A masterpiece of ancient town planning, Its temples and granaries were connected by the first paved roads in Europe, Built more than 1,000 years before the romans.
The Minoan empire stretched wide.
Archaeologists have discovered settlements throughout Crete As well as on other Aegean islands And parts of mainland turkey.
The Minoans shipped their intricate artifacts and pottery As far as Spain and Mesopotamia.
They were masters of the sea.
Their vast reach and influence Rivaled that of the ancient Egyptians.
Minoan artists produced the first great treasures Of ancient Europe.
This tiny gold seal is so small, it must have been created Using some form of magnifying lens.
This molding is less than an inch high, Yet it contains a portrait of an entire Minoan town.
Another masterpiece is the harvester vase.
You've got a little choir of men with skullcaps on, Whose mouths are open.
The reeds that some of them are holding, You can almost hear them blowing in the wind, Rustling against each other.
These pieces are symphonic in every way.
It's a revolution in art.
As Evans excavated the ruins of Knossos, He felt certain he had uncovered the palace of king Minos.
He even imagined he'd found the royal throne.
But Sandy MacGillivray thinks Evans misread the evidence.
He believes Knossos was not a palace but a temple, Carefully constructed to harness the magical power of the sun.
In 2001, sandy realized that each of these doorways Aligns with the rising sun On different key days of the year.
What we're looking at here is the solar temple.
Like the Egyptians, The Minoans worshiped the changing cycles of the sun, moon, and stars.
What we have here, then, is essentially a theater of the senses.
You can start off with complete blackness, And then you can fling open these doors At that moment of sunrise And experience that beginning of something new.
And in the winter, the sun comes through On the winter solstice And illuminates the throne.
But it's unclear who sat on the throne.
Evans believed it must have been a powerful male ruler, Like the Egyptian pharaohs.
But although there are myths about king Minos, There is no evidence of kings in Minoan art.
Instead, there are celebrations of striking female figures, Like this one found at Knossos.
Sandy believes she may have been a snake priestess, Perhaps part of a fertility order That wielded religious power And possibly also political influence in Minoan society.
The Minoans left many tantalizing clues about their world.
Their written language, called linear a, Has only recently been decoded.
Surprisingly, it shares DNA Not with other Mediterranean languages But with hieroglyphs from the Persians in the middle east.
Sandy believes the words tell us far more about the Minoans Than their art.
MacGillivray: a decipherment for linear a Has given us a language for this Cretan civilization Which is akin to the early language of Iran, Which found its way from the highlands of Iran All the way to India on one side And to Minoan Crete on the other side.
their origins seem to explain Why the Minoans were so different from the ancient Greeks, Who succeeded them.
Their language and religion were more Asian than European.
But it doesn't explain why 3,500 years ago, The Minoans disappeared.
Although there are some indications That the Minoans were attacked by armed invaders From the Greek mainland, Records of a nearby volcanic eruption Seem like a more promising place to start.
The island of Santorini, Which lies 70 miles north of Knossos, Is ground zero for the volcano theory.
Today, the jagged cliffs and beautiful scenery Draw countless tourists.
Many fail to realize they are vacationing On a highly explosive volcano.
In ancient times, it was called Thera.
The Minoans built the thriving city of Akroteri In the volcano's shadow.
It was discovered in 1967, Buried on the slopes of the vast crater.
In its heyday, Akroteri Was as wealthy and highly developed As the settlements on Crete.
Volcanologist Floyd McCoy Has been studying the geology and history of Santorini For 20 years.
McCoy: if you take a look at the wall paintings that have been discovered here, They are portraying their landscape.
It's a happy landscape.
Animals bouncing around and people picking saffron.
saffron was a valuable commodity In the classical world.
It was prized as a spice And it was also used for medicinal purposes.
The Minoans documented the saffron harvest On their frescoes.
McCoy: they were showing a nice, nice lifestyle, A comfortable one.
It's a pity it was all destroyed.
the Minoans had built their prosperous city On one of the most dangerous islands on earth.
Around 1,600 BC, Akroteri was shaken By a violent earthquake.
Some time later, the eruption occurred.
And suddenly, this thing exploded.
this was fire and brimstone Of epic proportions.
The huge volcano blasted gas, ash, and rock 25 miles into the stratosphere.
Evidence of the volcano's power Can be found all around Santorini.
Some of the deposits are more than 100 feet deep.
There, in that cliff face, all 4 layers representing The 4 major faces of this huge, dramatic eruption.
The first layer that we see is that brown layer at the bottom, That granular brown layer.
That's pumice.
Pumice is frothy rock.
It represents magma frozen in place, A frozen explosion.
the 2 layers above Are testimony to the lethal impact of Thera's eruption.
This is the debris left by pyroclastic flows.
McCoy: pyroclastic flows hot gas material That comes up and flows laterally across the landscape, Sometimes at supersonic speeds.
Hot, hot gases.
these gases were forced out By massive explosions in the heart of the volcano.
When the initial magma surge Erupted out of the Theran caldera, It left behind a vast, empty chamber.
The surface above the chamber collapsed, Creating a gaping cavity.
Then, the sea rushed in.
McCoy: magma and water do not mix.
They make an explosion.
The entire Aegean sea is pouring into this event, Mixing with new magma coming up, And the explosion was tremendous, huge.
And from that come these pyroclastic flows.
the destructive force was incomprehensible.
The third layer of the deposit is a 33-Foot wall of ash From a single flow.
Above it lies the fourth and final layer.
It started to rain.
Torrential rains came down.
And then all this loose ash and pumice on the surface Started to move down slow.
That's what we call debris flows.
And then it was over.
the thriving Minoan settlement on Santorini Was buried under the huge mounds of ash.
But did the eruption also obliterate Crete, 70 miles to the south? Floyd and his colleagues found ash deposits On the sea bed surrounding the island, Certainly an ominous sign.
We calculated the amount, the volume of this material, Which is how we figure out how explosive an eruption was.
It came out something like Krakatoa.
"Wow," we said.
when Krakatoa, The volcanic island that lies between java and Sumatra, Erupted in 1883, The explosion was heard 2,000 miles away.
The volcano claimed 36,000 lives.
But if Thera was that powerful, There should be widespread evidence of its eruption.
And there is.
A search turns up Theran ash 500 miles away in the black sea.
Archaeologist Stuart Dunn plots the known deposits.
We've put together a database of all these ash thicknesses, Recording their locations and recording the thickness.
each numbered triangle Represents a deposit of ash from Thera.
The location and thickness of these residues Allows Dunn to calculate how many millions of tons of material Were blasted across the region.
We concluded that the eruption was very, very much larger Than had been previously thought.
We were all wrong.
This was highly explosive.
Now we're up to 10 times the explositivity of Krakatoa.
We really are talking about the largest volcanic event in human history in Europe.
the volcano spewed out huge plumes of ash.
When the dense clouds headed towards Crete, The Minoans must have thought The gods were turning against them.
Imagine this ash coming over the island.
And we know it happened.
It blackened the air.
It blackened the blue sky for several days, probably, And that is pretty bad for people living with nature.
until recently, many archaeologists Believed that ash from Thera had smothered all life on Crete.
But although the explosion was huge, Prevailing winds carried much of the ash Away from the island.
The deposits that did reach Crete Were not deep enough to have destroyed the Minoans.
But if the ash hadn't wiped them out, what had? Sandy MacGillivray hopes he can find out.
He's been excavating the Minoan coastal town of Palaikastro On eastern Crete.
The extent of the ruins suggests This was the second-Largest Minoan settlement on the island.
Home to 5,000 people, it covered the whole of this slope, From the mountainside to the sea.
Palaikastro was a thriving community, With many skilled workers.
Its paved roads were laid out In a carefully executed grid pattern.
Today, the hill where the town stood Is eroding into the sea.
As the soil crumbles, it reveals A chaotically-Mixed layer of sediment That may contain hints about the fate of the Minoans.
MacGillivray: I used to come down here to the beach, And I would see these gravel deposits.
We had Theran ash, we had pottery, And there was building debris.
There was all this chaos.
And brought a number of specialists up here And said, "well, can you explain How this gravel got up here?" And one of them suggested that there was a river flowing up here, And I thought, "a river? "Why would a Minoan build their house in the middle of a river And how could a river run over a hilltop?" That made no sense whatsoever to me, And I thought, "let's get people to really investigate this properly.
" sandy has never seen anything like this mixed layer, So he calls in Hendrik bruins, A soil scientist from Ben-Gurion university in Israel.
Hendrik specializes in dating and identifying Unusual layers of sediment.
Bruins: look here.
We have stone, pottery, And lots of lumps of volcanic ash.
This is one lump.
This is another lump.
these chaotic layers are very different From what Hendrik would expect to find On a shoreline like this.
This is, from a sedimentary point of view, This is impossible to get, let's say, by an earthquake, And it's impossible to get by Natural archaeological stratification.
so what could have caused the untidy deposit? Hendrik takes samples, hoping a microscopic examination Will reveal clues about how the layer was formed.
So this is the hardened block Made from the sediment which we took in situ at the promontory, The soft, brittle material, Hardened afterwards.
Here we have the slide, the thin section That was made from the block.
under the microscope, Hendrik makes an unexpected find.
Bruins: we were really very, very thrilled When we saw foraminifera in these deposits.
foraminifera are tiny marine organisms, Usually found on the sea bed.
It's unusual to find them on land, Even in soil close to the water's edge.
And they're not the only undersea creatures Hendrik discovers.
There are also coral and algae in the sample.
These come from below the sea level And in order to deposit them in that level where we found them at a promontory, I mean, it has to be scooped up by something.
It has to be lifted up to a much higher level Where the sea normally never comes.
there is only one natural force That could have lifted these organisms off the sea floor And onto the headland A sudden, powerful, and devastating wave.
In 2004, the Indian ocean tsunami stunned the world.
It killed 230,000 people and wiped out entire coastlines.
Could the same thing have happened to the Minoans, 3,500 years ago? Is the Palaikastro beach deposit The footprint of a massive tsunami? Here you can see bits of paving.
sandy calls in leading tsunami expert Costas Synolakis To corroborate Hendrik's findings.
Costas has studied tsunami deposits From the 2004 wave And from other, smaller waves around the world.
As soon as they reach the beach, They find newly exposed Minoan pottery fragments Mixed in with the gravel.
These are cattle bones here.
You can see floor plaster and wall plaster.
You can see building material And you see a lot of typical pottery.
Ok.
Have a look at this deposit here, Costas.
There's the conical cup sitting right there.
It's 5 meters above Minoan sea level.
by comparison, the waves That hit Sri Lanka in 2004 Were estimated at 5 to 10 meters high, And they killed 30,000 people.
Synolakis: when sandy invited me to come out here And look at some of the evidence, I was very skeptical, but nonetheless, I was really keen to see what sandy had.
Sandy, I mean, if this is all the Minoan deposit, Must have been something really massive.
I mean, something of a scale that would have just Not even started thinking about.
What happened here? Costas wants to look further inland For more signs of damage.
The main ruins of Palaikastro are 300 yards From the chaotically-Mixed layers at the water's edge.
Now that they know what to look for, They see striking evidence of tsunami damage.
We find some walls entirely missing.
We find Entirely missing? Yeah.
Well, like the late Minoan I wall Along the bottom there is gone.
About half of the building is gone.
And, of course, this is what we see in modern tsunamis.
We call this the blowout.
The sea comes in, tsunami comes in, Blows out the walls.
If the building is strong enough, the side walls will survive.
But the walls facing the ocean, they're just going to collapse.
MacGillivray: all of a sudden, a lot of the deposits Began making sense to us, Because we had these buildings pulled away, We had the fronts of buildings missing, We had buildings razed right down to foundation level.
like the victims of the 2004 tsunami, The Minoans in Palaikastro Would have had no warning of the approaching waves.
Costas believes that with the right information, He can build a full picture of the scale And impact of the tsunami.
The first step is to create a 3-Dimensional map of the bay.
Costas uses sonar to plot the bay's contours.
The shape of the sea bed Would have influenced the speed and height of the tsunami As it approached the land.
Though the sands may have shifted since Minoan times, The data will still provide a useful approximation.
The next day, Costas extends his search back onto firm ground.
He wants to explore the plains around Palaikastro To find out exactly how far inland the tsunami traveled.
First stop is a new road construction project More than half a mile from the shore.
That's a seashell.
That's outrageous.
I don't believe this.
And it's all exposed.
And, look, there's more.
That looks to me like the rim of a hemispherical cup.
The period of Thera eruption.
the items are far inland And high above sea level.
Looks like we're at 31.
46 meters.
Can't believe we just That's about right.
We're cooking.
We are cooking.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha! the new finds are making a strong case For a tsunami, And the theory also provides the impetus To reexamine old evidence.
Environmental scientist Ania Sarpocky Has kept soil samples from 20 years of Palaikastro excavations.
She is now going back to check them For signs of the microscopic marine organisms That were found at the beach.
Sarpocky: in this particular sample, we have found foraminifera.
Oh, my goodness.
Is that what they look like? Sarpocky: uh-Huh.
Ania's finds are an important confirmation.
All the pieces are falling into place.
Synolakis: what Ania has found is extremely exciting.
Ania's foraminifera.
The wall.
And in the debris layer, Well, there's no other alternative explanation That can simultaneously explain all these findings Other than the fact that the tsunami was really big, Much bigger than we thought.
Came through.
Destroyed the town.
And pretty much covered most of the plain behind me.
the next question is what caused the wave That destroyed Palaikastro.
Tsunamis are often generated by enormous sub-Sea earthquakes, Like the one that created the 2004 wave.
Could such an earthquake have caused the Minoan disaster, Or was it generated by the Theran eruption? Hendrik bruins hopes this single fragment of cow bone From the Palaikastro shoreline Will provide the answer.
What I would like to see is, first of all, That the bone would give a date, a radiocarbon date, That is similar to the date for the Minoan Santorini eruption, Because then we have very, very hard scientific evidence That we're talking about the same time.
So if this radiocarbon date that comes from this bone Would be similar to the radiocarbon date Of the Santorini eruption, Then it's very, very important scientific evidence.
That's one piece.
the radiocarbon dating test Will take at least a week.
Meanwhile, the team sets out to explore the extent Of the wave's impact beyond Palaikastro.
They search along the north coast, Where any tsunami generated by Thera Would've struck the island.
But centuries of erosion have erased any evidence of wave damage.
Initial attempts near Palaikastro Turn up little, So they travel 30 miles west to the town of Mallia.
These are ruins of what was once The third largest Minoan palace on Crete.
As was typical, the town had no protective walls.
The Minoans were the strongest naval power in the ancient world And relied on their ships for defense.
Not far from the shore, the team finds a layer of pottery and building debris Similar to the one at Palaikastro.
Buried in the dirt is further evidence Of marine life where it shouldn't be.
Bruins: wow.
Look at that.
Man: very good.
Very good.
Very good.
So this strengthens our working hypothesis That this is a tsunami deposit.
The significance of is that it adds tremendous credibility To the deposits that we have found in Palaikastro, Right out in the promontory.
It's much more useful to have good deposits That are the distance of 20 miles apart from each other, 30 miles apart, Than having 2 deposits that are next to each other, Because then we have a better geographical constraint And that helps us identify how wide the wave is, What was the width of the wall of water that came towards Crete? at this point, they know the wave Was at least 30 miles wide.
But there are still more excavations to explore.
The next day, they reach Amnissos, The main port for the Minoan ships.
4,000 years ago, a tranquil villa Nestled among the olive groves on this idyllic coast.
It was decorated with frescoes That celebrated the natural beauty of the island.
But at some point, the villa was destroyed And the frescoes were torn from the wells.
When the site was excavated, large fragments of pumice Bearing the chemical fingerprint of Thera Were found in the ruins.
This petrified volcanic froth Is too heavy to have been carried In the Theran ash cloud, But it could've arrived by sea.
High in the hills above the villa, Sandy, Hendrik, and Costas Are looking for more samples of the Theran pumice.
MacGillivray: well, if we can find some pumice up here.
Put your eyes where your mouth is.
Let's try to find.
Let's try to find some pumice.
they are searching 60 feet above sea level.
All the pebbles.
This is it.
That, obviously, is volcanic.
See if it sparkles.
But it's round, this? Yeah, this is This is absolutely pumice.
It's not enough.
Do you realize what this means for The height of the tsunami? Ok, is there any other way That these pieces of These little, tiny pieces of pumice got up here? How else could the pumice get here? It's not a souvenir.
Synolakis: you could get destruction down there With a wave that's maybe 3 meters high.
Who knows how strong the house was? But finding pumice up here is unbelievable.
I mean, this is huge.
MacGillivray: there's tons of this stuff up here.
This is outrageous.
As a child, there was a big anthill At one end of the garden, And we used to go with the garden hose And wash them off, And that keeps coming back somewhere in my memory.
And I keep thinking that wave had an effect Like just washing ants off an anthill And sweeping them out to sea.
It's a terrifying thing.
Those ants never had a chance.
with evidence accumulating For an island-Wide tsunami, Hendrik is eager to get the results From the radiocarbon dating test of the cow bone.
Only then will they know for sure If the tsunami was caused by the Theran volcano on Santorini Or by an underwater earthquake.
Oh, my goodness.
Ok.
the results finally arrive.
The date is 1,600 b.
C.
, An exact match with the Theran eruption.
You know, the The cattle bones, they are of the same age As the Santorini eruption, And it proves that also, our chaotic tsunami deposit Has also in radiocarbon terms The same age as the Santorini eruption, Which is superb.
now certain that the volcano Did in fact cause the tsunami, The men can begin to calculate Exactly how massive the wave had been.
A reference point for destructive power Is the 2004 tsunami.
Yes.
We've created a monster.
from his survey measurements, Costas maps the wave's assault on the surrounding land masses.
Red and green peaks show the height of the water.
Synolakis: the size of the wave here, Just to give you in a comparison, Is equivalent to what the wave looked like Off Sri Lanka and off Thailand.
If you know how many people Died in Thailand, how many people died in Sri Lanka.
I mean, Thailand, it's 20 meters.
It's the same size wave right here.
20 meters.
the initial wave was huge, But even more disturbing, the simulation shows It was followed by others.
It's having It's having a party.
when the caldera collapsed, It pushed several walls of water into the sea, Like a pebble dropping into a pond.
The water ricocheted around the Aegean islands In a deadly game of tsunami pinball.
As volcanic ash darkened the sky.
The Minoans were hit by wave after wave.
Wow.
This is it's coming in.
No.
Yes.
What are the intervals between Synolakis: well, let's Let's have a look how This is about 33 minutes.
And now we have Bruins: the first wave coming in.
And now you have the second one.
And that's at 46 minutes.
And then you have another wave In about half an hour later, Which is not as big but has to be terrifying, Because by that time, everything I mean, the people have run away.
Maybe some people are coming back To help the wounded, To try to find family members, And then this other wave comes in and sort of finishes the job.
This is horrifying.
Synolakis: yeah.
It's absolutely horrifying.
But it doesn't narrator: over 25 years, Sandy has grown to respect and admire the Minoans.
Now he is forced to truly contemplate How many of them died.
My reaction to seeing that model Was a bit like seeing Watching 9/11.
Because I just I hate disasters.
It's like when you spend a lot of time looking for something, And then when you find it, you wish you hadn't because it becomes too real And you begin to feel the experience.
This is life, this is people Just being washed out to sea, bashed around, Knocked against walls.
Ships coming ashore.
There's a whole There's a whole instant that flashes through your head.
Striking observation that I've made Just talking to people all over the world Tsunamis.
Whether it is Nicaragua or whether it is Sri Lanka Or whether it is in the Philippines, They tell you about the noise.
Tsunami comes in and they tell you that it sounds like Some people say like falling rain.
Others tell you that it's like an airplane landing.
This impression I mean, this What you hear Time and time again Irrespective of where you are.
The feeling is that this is the end of the world.
Once a tsunami starts climbing up on dry land, It's moving at a speed of maybe anywhere between 10 to 20 miles per hour.
It's almost like being in a 20,000 mile per hour wind.
Nothing can stop it.
It's not even a question of being scared.
The moment that you see the tsunami, most people freeze.
I'm trying to think, how would the Minoan Have reacted to this phenomenon, which is These people love the sea.
I mean, they worship the sea.
And here is the sea that's turning against them.
Once they come up on the hill And they look back and they look at the destruction, How can they ever go back and live in the same place? It's probably cursed.
there are no written records Of the Theran tsunami, No figures for the death and destruction it caused.
But the 2004 tsunami can give us Some idea of its devastating impact.
The Minoans, they're so confident in their navy That they're living in unprotected cities All along the coastline.
These were the major population centers.
That's where people are living.
Now, you go to Banda Aceh And you find that the mortality rate is 80%.
If we're looking at a similar mortality rate in Crete, That's the end of the Minoans.
the tsunami destroyed all the major Minoan towns.
Their great civilization was brought to its knees.
Never again would these enigmatic people Dominate the Mediterranean.
Archaeologists are only now beginning to understand What happened in the decades that followed.
One of the most remarkable clues Is a small statue that was found in Palaikastro.
It was discovered in an archaeological layer Deposited 100 years after the disaster.
MacGillivray: he's made of ivory tusks, gold, He has a serpentinite head, And he is one of the great masterpieces of Minoan art.
His cuticles are even carved.
He's given pulsating veins.
The sculptor wanted him to be alive.
the attention to detail was astounding, And the statue was magnificent by any standards, But it was in terrible condition when it was found.
It had been badly charred, shattered, And scattered around the building that housed it, Both inside and out.
This was a valuable piece.
Anybody who had this in his possession would've been rich, But they did not care.
They wanted to destroy the statue.
Somebody picked up the statue from its base And brought it outside.
He took the statue and smashed the face Into, probably, this side of the wall And made the stone head fall And have the torso and the arms drop in front of the steps of the shrine And threw in the legs in the burning house.
this was more than a random act of vandalism.
It was ritualized violence Against a powerful symbol of Minoan culture.
Driessen: they really went for the face, And so we see that in all different kinds of civilizations Egyptian or roman.
When they go for the face, there is something symbolic involved.
They want to destroy everything this statue stood for.
additional signs of such deliberate destruction Have been found in other places on the island.
At Chania in western Crete, An excavation at the heart of the modern town Has revealed evidence of ancient arson.
These are the stones that are in such a condition Because of the strong fire.
the hallmarks of fire are clear, But the cause of the blazes is still being debated.
Are these signs of internal strife Or external enemy invasion? Archaeologist Maria Vlasaki Believes the answer lies in an unusual cemetery in Chania.
The bodies have been dated to the period Of widespread unrest in the Minoan world.
Vlasaki: these are warrior graves.
They are single burials, something that is in opposition With the traditional Cretan Minoan customs.
Vlasaki: they have the age of between 24 to 30.
They are tall, robust.
They look to be invaders.
similar bodies have been found Near Knossos as well.
Their weapons were not Minoan.
They resembled those used by the ancient Peloponnese Greeks.
They have a lot of weapons.
Long swords like the ones that are In Knossos and in Peloponnese.
the invaders from the Greek mainland Slashed and burned their way across Crete, Overwhelming the weakened Minoans.
Sandy MacGillivray believes the tsunami Not only left he Minoans ripe for an attack, It gave the Greeks an important military advantage.
MacGillivray: their traditional homeland Is on the southern shores of the gulf of Corinth.
Tsunami cannot get into the gulf of Corinth.
To get into there, you have to go All the way around to the west to a little, narrow opening.
So the Mycenaean Greeks up there Are probably the only people left, Maybe even in the eastern Mediterranean, with a navy.
This is power.
within a generation of their arrival, The Greeks had completely conquered Crete.
The last embers of Minoan culture flickered out.
At long last, the story of the Minoan disappearance Has been unearthed.
5,000 years after it hit, an epic natural disaster Can be blamed for their collapse.
This is a major discovery now because what it's doing is it's Helping us to rewrite a chapter in Minoan archaeology, In the history of the Minoans.
This is absolutely exciting.
I mean, it's just Even in my wildest dream, When I started thinking of becoming a scientist, Did I ever think that I would be working on understanding The demise of the Minoans And what happened back then, the second millennium b.
C.
a wave that washed away an empire Is strikingly reminiscent of a mystical city That sank beneath the waves, And though we may never know for sure if Crete was Atlantis, We at least have an explanation For the downfall of Europe's first great civilization.
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