The lost cities

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33739, 11 January 1975, Page 11

The lost cities

It’s just a large gaping hole in the ground, between a macaroni factory in Torre Annunziata and several blocks of modern flats. Yet to the world’s most dedicated archeologists, it represents one of their greatest discoveries. Inside the hole is the evidence that Oplontis — the city that few people really believed existed — was indeed wiped out by Vesuvius some 2000 years ago. Professor Alfonso de Franciscus, its discoverer, conducted a guided tour of the ruins of a villa that had been built there long before the birth of Christ. And he said proudly: “That’s the clue that the entire city of Oplontis was completely wiped off the face of the earth. “It’s been my most exciting experience . . . discovering a city which we all knew about, but could never locate on any map.” Band waggon Certainly, Professor de Franciscus is leaping aboard a very popular band-waggon. These days more “lost cities” than ever before are apparently being re-discovered.

Imagine stumbling across another one that vanished more than 2000 years ago — and finding it almost exactly as it was when people thronged its streets in 373 B.C.

That is the exciting prospect facing members of Greece’s Department of Antiquities, whose 10-year search may have led them to the long-lost city of Helice, which was completely engulfed by a tidal wave following an earthquake. Historians of the time recorded that not one single inhabitant survived, and a Spartan fleet on a ceremonial visit also perished. Now Professor Syridon Marinatos, Director-General of Antiquities, reveals that he is confident that he has found Helice.

His calculations are based on ancient records and modem scientific estimates of the encroachment and retreat of the sea, which indicate that the city’s remains lie in the half-mile stretch between the mouths of the rivers Selinus and Cerynites. “When Pompeii was destroyed in A.D. 79, people had time to escape, some of them taking precious property with them,” says Professor Marinatos. "In Helice everything must have remained in place, because the city disappeared from the earth’s surface while still bustling with life. Its end was sudden, unexpected. “We would like to find the whole city, perhaps still surrounded by its walls and then it could be completely restored just like Pompeii. . . .” Certainly, there have been no traces of Helice for more than 800 years, when fishermen found that their nets were constantly being damaged by huge, bronze statues just beneath the sea.

And the coastline had been altered considerably since then by erosion and earthquakes.

Romantic discovery Lost cities and vanished civilisations have intrigued explorers and historians for centuries. And Professor Marinates told me that there are thought to be about 200 sunken cities along the Mediterranean coast, most of which are Greek or Roman. Troy, of course, was the »

most romantic modem discovery. Just over a century ago, it was finally tracked down by a German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, whose archaeological detection was based on clues 2600 years old which came from Homer’s Iliad. Schliemann excavated near the entrance to the Dardanelles and found not one but seven Troys. And his most spectacular discovery was a hoard of exquisite gold ornaments. Military power Schliemann proved that Troy belonged not only to legend — with myflx>logical heroes like Achilles and Odysseus — but to history. Atlantis, of course, is the ultimate archaeological treasure. If anybody ever finds it they could unearth not only a city, but an entire continent, believed to have vanished beneath the Atlantic some 12,000 years ago.

There is little evidence that Atlantis ever existed. The one and onlv “historical” reference was by Plato, about 400 B.C. Plato described a great military power on an island beyond Straits of Gibraltar, which was the centre of a vast empire, that ruled over many other islands and both coasts of the Mediterranean. After Atlantis was apparently eventually defeated in battle by the Athenians, Plato described "violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.” His account really started something.

Underwater rains Since then historians have argued their casea for believing Atlantis was situated at various points over half the globe — from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, to Scandinavia to South America. And the search has gone on ever since. Two years ago, the Rockwell Corporation financed an expedition off Bimini, in the Bahamas after sightings of underwater ruins were reported. All that was found was a 500 yd long row of huge stone blocks, weighing up to 40 tons each. Many of them, it was claimed, were square and undoubtedly cut by man.

CHARLES FRASER tells of the search for 200 lost cities. One being unearthed in Greece is virtually intact after almost 3000 years.