Access
This article is part of Nature's premium content.
Published online 18 May 2009 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2009.484
News: Q&A
Mapping the world's oldest submerged town
Underwater archaeologist Jon Henderson is hoping to reveal the secrets of the ancient Greek town of Pavlopetri.
A few metres under the sea, near the town of Neapolis at the southern tip of Greece, lies Pavlopetri. Discovered and mapped in the 1960s, it will become the first underwater town to be digitally surveyed in three dimensions.
To read this story in full you will need to login or make a payment (see right).
Comments
Reader comments are usually moderated after posting. If you find something offensive or inappropriate, you can speed this process by clicking 'Report this comment' (or, if that doesn't work for you, email webadmin@nature.com). For more controversial topics, we reserve the right to moderate before comments are published.
Partially I have an answer for question no. 2 "Are there other submerged towns around the world like it?" Yes, I have read about ancient Dwaraka submerged in the Arabian sea off coast Gujarat, India. Dr. S. R. Rao from Oceanography Institute Goa has done work on Dwaraka and as far as I remember he has published the results also.
Atlit-Yam in Israel is: older (Pre-Pottery Neolithic) bigger, area of ca. 40000 m2 and dipper - depth of 8-12 m http://www.antiquities.org.il/article_Item_eng.asp?sec_id=14&subj_id=139 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlit_Yam
Regarding the above comments on the age of other submerged sites around the world: Atlit-Yam is certainly older than Pavlopetri, but is rather a spread-out settlement and is considered a village rather than a planned town. Jon Henderson says: "[Atlit Yam] consists of a few rectangular building foundations and a well spread over quite a large area and cannot in any way be considered to be a town. Ehud Galili (the excavator) calls it a village. There are older submerged sites in the world - Palaeolthic flint scatters, caves and landscapes, Mesolithic sites in Denmark etc., but none can be considered to be planned towns like Pavlopetri." Henderson also comments that claims for the age of Dwarka, off the coast of Gujarat in India, have never been scientifically confirmed.