Race to preserve the world's oldest submerged town - Part 2

[thegreeensky]

very interesting.. great work!

[Shandchem]

Amazing place! Brilliant team work!

[gatakiarvuliotiko]

every summer i am swimming there only with my mask!!1 yes i am greek! no its not atlantis!! but its AWESOME people!! its magical!!! <3 lakonia is the best place in the world <3

[x1altair]

Not even close to be being the oldest..... Euro-centric ppl would do anything claim it being the oldest by disregarding other ancient sites that predates this

[bhaltos]

@x1altair Okay then give me a name of an older submerged town with a planned layout - streets, walls, courtyards, puiblic areas etc. Of course there are older submerged sites (humans have been around for 200,000 years) but there is nothing with a planned layout like Pavlopetri that has yet been found underwater.

[theodorosGR]

nice work

[Uwiluz60]

Great find...And when I found an arrowhead on my uncles farm I really thought I found something .

[davidson2096]

I want to become an a maritime archeologist what would i need to study and would i need to do diving lessons now or when i take the course in uni? (im 14)

[bvgatti]

to be more accurate my friends the oldest civilization is supposedly arround 400 000 years old . wat we know and discovered are just one page in our human history book wich we still missing the first few thounsand of pages .

[1820sept]

Thank you for the interest you are showing in Greek archeology.

[ZoDiaCsph]

I'm from there..... Neapoli Lakonias Greece

[celica1135]

@ZoDiaCsph me too! Αγιος Γεώργιος Λακωνίας

[Frankfrynk]

Is there any independent historical evidence for the existence of this site, or is the archaeology all there is?

[bkdfighter]

That's so cool how the scuba diver can talk inside his mask!!! Looks like he has a pretty awesome job.

[magick205]

One thing i've just got to ask, with all the diving, did you need to adjust your gases mix. I know it's shallow, but the amount of time you were down had to have had some affect. How did you deal with it?

[magick205]

@decaalv: Or go to Pulozzi, near Naples. It's a Roman town that was submerged and then raised back above sea level. Or better yet, go to Thermopylea in Greece. The pass has retreated almost a mile from the shoreline over the centuries.

[jrklkde]

@magick205@decaalv: The underwater Archaeology Park of Baiae near Pozzuoli really is wonderful; it sunk due to bradyseism but still has the streets lined with walls and columns of buildings and there are also intact mosaics and statues... and like the Notingham Uni. team found out in Greece, there's always something else to be discovered! Truly amazing!

[ufewl]

For me this proves global warming is happen now. Please please use low energy light bulbs or your city could be next on the list.

Thank you :O|

[dmarie1184]

I have a few silly questions. Why is the city underwater now? Is it just the natural sea level rising or was there some sort of catastrophe? Was the city abandoned slowly over time because of the sea level rising?

Just wondering if there was anything found that lets you know how long the city's been submerged.

[bhaltos]

This is answered below in the NottmUniversity comments... tectonic change not sea level change - most probably in a series of stages.

[HighHeatProductions]

Yay im viewer 85,000. Whats my prize?

[NottmUniversity]

You get a free subscription! Thanks for viewing.

[freezazoid]

@HighHeatProductions Why is that a significant number? So every 5000 views someone gets a prize? Why not every 2000 views or every 1000 views? You're prize is you're a moron.. congratulations.

[M50SNIPER]

Wow, this is simply amazing. I think I'm starting to get back into archaeology.

[TexasToast09]

New York's fate

[JaquariusWilson]

notthingham, isnt that the name of the castle in peter pan

[WilltheGamer]

Youre thinking of robin hood

[NottmUniversity]

Close, it's the home of the Robin Hood tale

[JaquariusWilson]

well i knew it was something

[AlternateViewpoint]

@NottmUniversity :D ... Well, 'close' being a loosely applied term as in horseshoes & atom bombs. In fact, the proximity is that Peter Pan is a fictional character in a story based in London & Robin Hood is PROBABLY a fictional character from a folk tale set in the North Midlands quite a ways from London, but they both lived in England... or, in Pan's case, a fantastical adjacent dimension to Edwardian London. So, erm... not really very close at all.

But the archaeology... so cool. :)

[butlerjin]

its really hard to believe that a civilization is in its glory when western humans where just learning how to use language and learning to use tool. in short western humans were just advanced monkeys when this civilization arise.

forgive me for my english hahah im not so affluent with it these days.

[bhaltos]

I think you will find that European cultures with quite advanced by the third to second milleninum BC with very complex metalworking, trade and settlements. They had also been using language for tens of thousands of years. Plus homo sapiens have no connection to monkeys - the split was from apes about 6 million years ago.

[wuhlei]

what is the oldest record of human?

[davet1515]

that's a tough question. the oldest civilization is supposedly sumer. but archeologists have found ruins in ecuador and chile that are tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of years old. homo sapiens is about 40,000 years old.

[TidePools]

I find it interesting that modern society tends to think of past societies as less intelligent. Technology and society has advanced due to generations of knowledge and discovery building upon one another, not because the human brain has 'evolved' into something more brilliant than our distant forefathers. This always cracks me up.

[bhaltos]

Exactly right - modern homo sapien sapiens 200,000 years ago were as intelligent as you or I.

[buzwazfuz]

no, i learned in AP psych last year that intelligence of humans increases over time. I forgot what it is called, i think flint curve, maybe. it is because as time goes on people learn much more at an earlier age.

[glitchez]

@TidePools Thousands of years humans had the same level of technology, but all of a sudden the last 100 years we accelerate like crazy? something odd is going on, we somehow got technology from another "race" is what i think, or trading technology or stealing it but we have progressed FAST. Im jk but is that so hard to believe? my 2 cents

[butlerjin]

lol. the worlds oldest submerged town was found at the southern part of japan. it dates back to the early stone age. some think that it was part of an independent kingdom from china and japan and due to the rising water level after the ice age, it submerged. there were still anomalies surrounding this because due to the age of the artifact, experts find it hard to believe coz it may rewrite history.

[s0p1noy]

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[bhaltos]

Er... the site you mention in Japan off Yonaguni Jima is entirely natural - there are no finds (apart from stones), no dating evidence and it certainly was not a town - not a single wall is present on the site. Older submerged sites than Pavlopetri exist off Japan but they are Jomon hut sites with flints not towns like Pavlopetri. Thats the point really...

[KryssySushi]

It's stuff like this that makes me want to go into Archaeology. This is just amazing. 5000 years old!

[NottmUniversity]

There are more Archaeology videos on our channel - check them out!

[gloup81]

@KryssySushi this must be wrong , sesklos is a town from 5.500 bc thats 8500 years ... there must be some misunderstanding here

[anthonyventrello]

what a find. We can assume that this find was probably the inspiration for Atlantis. It is a definite important find. Congrats!!!

[fifabublz17]

this is one of the COOLEST things that I've heard this year; wow, just look at that clear water, they're too lucky :D

[ThFranke]

Nice video, thank you very much. Not Atlantis (smile), but anyway a very interesting place, since the water preserved all untouched!

[bhaltos]

There is more footage on the BBC news website. Type 'pavlopetri' into the search engine on the BBC news site.

[davolente]

Very interesting. A longer documentary would be even better!

[NottmUniversity]

There's much more work to be done, so watch this space!

[drfahar123]

I also wondered how it would dovetail with the Biblical Story of Noah.  If it fits into the Biblical event, it would correspond to a local flood and Atlantis would be likely to be located close to Crete or even the Libyan Coast, but not in the Atlantic Ocean, which Plato may have been confused about after fusing together early stories.

[rubstrol]

Maybe it submerged because the population got very fat...

[NottmUniversity]

I'm hazarding a guess that's probably not the case, but nice theory.

[Frankfrynk]

Does anyone know when and why/how this place was submerged?

[NottmUniversity]

Jon Henderson says One of the key aims of the survey season next year is to study the geomorphology and bathymetry of the surrounding area more thoroughly to begin to answer this question. Sea level goes up and down for all sorts of reasons in warm periods the ice caps begin to melt and global sea levels rise, in cold periods they expand and sea level drops.

[NottmUniversity]

However, we know that sea levels in the Mediterranean have changed very little since 5000 BP (c. plus or minus 50cm every thousand years) meaning that we cannot cite sea level change as a causal factor for the submergence of Pavlopetri. Instead we are likely looking at the effects of earth movements (tectonic change).

[NottmUniversity]

The Eastern Mediterranean is one of the most active earthquake regions in the world. For examle, western Crete has risen by 6 metres while the Bay of Naples has gone down by nearly 10 metres. It looks like Pavlopetri has gone down by 4 to 5 metres sometime after c.1000 BC judging by the pottery evidence.

[NottmUniversity]

This is probably part of the response of the whole of the Peloponnese to the movements of Africa towards Europe and Turkey squeezing in from the west. Some parts of the land go up and some parts go down it can be quite a localised phenomenon with some parts of the same coastline uplifted while other parts are submerged. Whether Pavlopetri was abandoned due to it being submerged we do not yet know.

[NottmUniversity]

It may have survived as a ruin on land, slowly disappearing under windblown sand before the waves invaded it in a series of tectonic events or one major event".

[magick205]

Like the pass of Thermopylae's retreat from the sea? The one thing that really makes me wonder is just how much human history is lost under the North Sea and Beringia after the end of the last Ice Age. How much is lost we may never truely know. Is anyone looking into these questions? I do know at least one paper here in the US on settlements found in the Great Lakes.

[mobiusII]

Graham Hancock's Underworld deals with underwater archaelogical sites all over the world. You should check that out!

[magick205]

@mobiusII: Thanks for the tip. I'll go take a look. Perhaps, like that one city in near Rome, it will rise out of the sea again. What was the name? Pozzuoli, near Naples. Took me a few minutes to find it. Ah, the internet. What fun you bring to my home.

[nycpaulll]

Is there an animation to show how ancient stone house fall apart over the ages leaving only the base outline of rooms. Where are all the stones that made up the walls. Why are the room outlines so clear in straight lines. It almost looke like the houses were picked up leaving the base. Any Archaeology 101 videos around?

[NottmUniversity]

In the Bronze Age period the ground floor levels of houses were often solidly built of stone while the upper parts of the walls were timber frames fixed into the walls and covered by mud plaster (this would give the buildings more flexibility and earthquake resistance). In the sea the mud plaster sections would have eroded away leaving just the stone foundations. Only once we excavate will we know how deep these stone foundations survive.

[bonnerstag]

Congratulations! Wonderful job!

[Daisyshed]

Awesome video

[drfahar123]

Too late to be an Atlantis. What a shame

[NottmUniversity]

I agree, but there's still so much to discover - what are your views on Atlantis?

[drfahar123]

Sorry for my late reply. However, my views are basically derived from the views of Robert Graves (famous for his 'Greek Myths' books). Like Graves, I wondered why the Atlantis story would be as dispersed as it is: from the Hebrides of Scotland to the Yoruba tribes of Africa. It made me wonder if there was not an apocalyptic event which buried a technologically proficient island race.

[LaMiradaBob]

Thank you for a very interesting presentation.

[heritagekeymedia]

Totally awesome... . Best of luck with the conservation and surveying!

Ann

[michaeljpurdy]

Bravo, bravo, bravo! It is great to see such a concerted effort to explore these important remains. I wish I could be involved!