Ballard (the Titanic guy) to search Aegean seafloor

Robert Ballard was sucessful in his search for the Titanic. Now he's searching the seafloor of the Aegean for ancient shipwrecks, in collaboration with the Greek Cultural Muinistry. The Cultural Ministry had previously been against cooperating with Ballard.

Many of you already know that one such ancient wreck yielded the Antikythera mechanism. It was found (accidentally) by sponge divers.

Recently, it has been realized that the ancient Med. cultures truly sailed across the Med. (previously it had been believed that they mostly stayed within view of the shoreline.) This means that there are almost certainly a huge number of underwater archaeological sites on the seafloor in the Mediterreanean that remain undiscovered today.

If Ballard is able to come up with anything exciting at all, it could result in a large increase in this sort of research, which would no doubt vastly increase our knowledge of the history of the ancient peoples in this part of the world.

Link:
The Thera Expedition

Harte

Well Harte, This is nice to see.

I would like to point out Ballard was also the researcher doing the Aquatic Works in the Black Sea, confirming the Flood Legends from this area.

He maybe well able to find much, much more than just ships. I am looking forward to seeing what can be located and found as well.

I hope he does better than in the Dead Sea though. But I guess he would be in either Grecian or International Waters, and not infringing on Third Country Waters, as Jordan was upset about. I saw a documentary on this, and they suggested the Jordianians where going to blow the Ship out of the water, but I guess thats the life of an adventurer. Jordan was not to pleased to see Ships seeking Sodom near their shores.

Anyways, if I find anything, I'll bring it here to contribute my friend.

Ciao

Shane

Originally posted by Shane
Well Harte, This is nice to see.

I would like to point out Ballard was also the researcher doing the Aquatic Works in the Black Sea, confirming the Flood Legends from this area.

He maybe well able to find much, much more than just ships. I am looking forward to seeing what can be located and found as well.

Shane,
If you look at the bottom of the page I linked, you'll see that the Thera expedition is part of this larger study that included the Black Sea investigations you mention. There's some links there.

Some of the search around Thera was supposed to be broadcast live, but I think it was on some closed-circuit system for use by academic institutions, you know, for students to watch. However, this means that film exists and who knows what the history Channel or the Discovery channel might edit into a two-hour program.

I certainly hope they turn up something very old, rather than just some old Roman stuff. Minoan would be excellent, recovering artifacts from that era would be fantastic. Imagine a "rosetta stone"-type stela that would finally allow us to translate the linear A script of Crete!

Harte

In case some of the Reviewers, are not completely upto speed, with the topic here, I would like to offer the following for review.

www.sacred-texts.com...
MYTHS OF CRETE & PRE-HELLENIC EUROPE By DONALD A. MACKENZIE [1917]

When I first saw learned of the existence of this book, I was a little suprised, since very little concrete information is available on this topic, and even less was known in 1917. However, to paraphrase a recent President of the United States, Myths of Crete depends on what your definition of of is....

There is substantial mythology about Crete. The Minoan civilization, which predated the better known classical Hellenic period by several hundred years, disappeared catastrophically, battered by volcanic eruptions and barbarian incursions. Successive generations, starting with the classical Greeks, created a vast number of myths about the vanished sea-empire. The Homeric epics, Daedalus and Icarus, King Minos and the Minotaur, and even, as Mackenzie points out, Atlantis, were all influenced by hearsay and speculation about the lost Cretan empire.

At the beginning of the 20th century archeologists finally started to excavate the Minoan ruins. Based lagely on circumstantial evidence such as the vivid wall art and the startling Goddess iconography, popularizers like Mackenzie built an entire new set of myths about the ancient Cretans. This mythology was eagerly adopted by neo-pagans, starting with Robert Graves, who wrote a little-known science fiction novel on the subject, Watch the Northwind Rise.

What do we actually know about Minoan mythology as of today? In a word, nothing. The Minoans developed the first known European writing systems, known as Linear A and B. Linear B was deciphered by Michael Ventris in 1952. Only commercial documents have been found, as befits a sea-trading empire. The other Minoan script, Linear A, remains a mystery. Although the phonetic values of some Linear A symbols have been tenatively identified, they have yet to be translated. So we have no translated Minoan religious documents to work with, although we can infer that certain Linear A texts are magical or religious in nature because they are inscribed on ritual objects.

We can assume from the prevelence of female images in ritual contexts that the Minoans worshipped one or more Goddesses. We also know that animals played an important role in their rituals, particularly snakes and bulls. However, any attempt at this point to make definite statements about their mythology or spiritual practices is inferential at best.

One factual correction must be noted. The story of Schliemann's Atlantis bequest, reported in Chapter V, page 98, turned out to be a complete hoax. This yarn appeared in a sensationalist Hearst newspaper in 1914, and as this book was written only a few years later, we can probably forgive Mackenzie for reporting it as fact. The entire article, How I found the Lost Atlantis, along with our analysis of it, is also at sacred-texts.

Nevertheless, Mackenzie, who also wrote Myths and Legends of Ancient Egypt, manages to stretch the subject matter out into a full 300 page book. Informative, well researched and very readable, Myths of Crete is a unique book about a very opaque period of history.

--J.B. Hare

This here is an introduction, and the Link is associated to the Main index page, for reading and review.

I hope it is useful, and can let some, who may not be familiar with this topic, gain some background to this Area/Region and the Timeframe/Era.

It is a very good read, and gives some insights into what MAYBE found around these Islands, aside from solely Vessels.

I hope that he (Ballard) is afforded the time to do this search fully, with the blessing of the Greek Government and their cooperation.

Ciao

Shane