The End of Atlantis [antikvár]

The Editors wish to point out that in their opinion the main thesis of this article requires additional support from excavation on selected sites. They hope that such excavations will in due course be carried out. The 4 Editors' in question were those of the English periodical Antiquity which in 1939 published a notable article by Professor Spyridon Marinatos, Director of the Greek Archaeological Service, on 'The volcanic destruction of Minoan Crete\ Professor Marinatos maintained with a considerable show of evidence that the recognized and widespread destruction of Knossos and of Cretan civilization generally soon after 1500 bc was the result of ultra-violent volcanic activity on the island of Thera (Santorini) somé 110 km. north of Crete. Now, thirty years later, Professor Marinatos has actually been carrying out excavations at Akrotiri, near the southern end of the main island of the Thera group, and has amplified earlier discoveries of sub-volcanic Minoan (Cretan) walling to an extent which, combined with the great height of the volcanic overburden, may be said to prove much of his thesis of 1939. The whole destructive happening seems to have begun with a shattering earthquake and to have continued in the form of two eruptions of which the second was the more severe and was certainly accompanied by immense tidal waves. Debris and waves alike reached Crete, no doubt with further earthquakes, and the Minoan civilization was in effect blotted out. Only Knossos, relatively sheltered, survived after a fashion, now seemingly under Greek-speaking opportunists from the mainland. But that is not all. The episode has drawn afresh into the daylight, from nebulous Platonic hearsay and modern peri-lunacy, the old Lost Continent of Atlantis. As long ago as 1909 a young scholar in Belfast had printed the inspired guess that the fabulous