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Off the southern coast of mainland Greece, | 0:00:06 | 0:00:09 | |
lie the ruins of a city, | 0:00:09 | 0:00:10 | |
founded over 5,000 years ago. | 0:00:10 | 0:00:13 | |
It seems to be an incredibly advanced culture here. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
People were living in buildings with two storeys, | 0:00:18 | 0:00:21 | |
they had flushing toilets, they had drainage systems, | 0:00:21 | 0:00:24 | |
they had the beginnings of writing. | 0:00:24 | 0:00:26 | |
This city thrived for 2,000 years during the time that saw | 0:00:29 | 0:00:33 | |
the birth of western civilisation. | 0:00:33 | 0:00:37 | |
Pavlopetri is one of the first places in Europe where | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
we begin to see buildings and streets | 0:00:40 | 0:00:43 | |
and people living side-by-side in a way of life | 0:00:43 | 0:00:46 | |
that we would recognise today. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:48 | |
But then the city vanished, consumed by the sea. | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
Now an international team, | 0:00:55 | 0:00:56 | |
led by underwater archaeologist Jon Henderson | 0:00:56 | 0:01:00 | |
has come to unlock the secrets of this mysterious sunken city. | 0:01:00 | 0:01:05 | |
A really exciting find. This is great. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
Using the latest 21st century technologies, | 0:01:13 | 0:01:16 | |
they plan to digitally rebuild the city, | 0:01:16 | 0:01:19 | |
stone by stone. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:20 | |
This is maybe just a little glimpse of prehistoric suburbia. | 0:01:23 | 0:01:28 | |
Thought to be the oldest submerged city in the world, | 0:01:32 | 0:01:35 | |
now, for the first time, the secrets will be revealed | 0:01:35 | 0:01:39 | |
of Pavlopetri, | 0:01:39 | 0:01:43 | |
the City Beneath The Waves. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:45 | |
For Nottingham University archaeologist Dr Jon Henderson, | 0:01:58 | 0:02:02 | |
the sunken city of Pavlopetri | 0:02:02 | 0:02:04 | |
provides a unique glimpse into a lost world. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:07 | |
The site itself just begins a few metres off the coast here | 0:02:09 | 0:02:13 | |
and that's a very rare thing. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:15 | |
In a way, this is like an underwater Pompeii, | 0:02:15 | 0:02:18 | |
it's a settlement frozen in time. | 0:02:18 | 0:02:20 | |
The city dates to the Bronze Age, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:25 | |
over 3,000 years ago. | 0:02:25 | 0:02:27 | |
This was the time of Troy, King Agamemnon | 0:02:30 | 0:02:33 | |
and Homer's Odyssey. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:35 | |
You've got one line of stones going up there | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
and you've got another line of stones going up there. | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
This is one of the main streets of Pavlopetri. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:47 | |
People walked down here, this was a busy street. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:53 | |
On this side you just have a wall, | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
but on this side here, | 0:02:57 | 0:02:58 | |
we actually have a range of houses, | 0:02:58 | 0:03:01 | |
a range of domestic dwellings. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:03 | |
The Bronze Age was a time of great change, | 0:03:07 | 0:03:09 | |
when people started living in towns for the first time, | 0:03:09 | 0:03:13 | |
with trade and exchange of cultures and ideas. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:17 | |
Pavlopetri is a blueprint for our own way of life. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
This was a place that was a thriving city where people used to live. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:29 | |
You get a sense of some sort of major drama has happened, | 0:03:29 | 0:03:34 | |
a major catastrophe. | 0:03:34 | 0:03:36 | |
It's quite an eerie feeling. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:40 | |
Located just off the coast of Laconia, | 0:03:43 | 0:03:46 | |
in the southern Peloponnese, | 0:03:46 | 0:03:49 | |
this area is prone to violent earthquakes and tsunamis. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:53 | |
Coastal towns have always faced a constant threat. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:57 | |
I want to know what happened to the city of Pavlopetri. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
I want to know who was living here, | 0:04:00 | 0:04:02 | |
I want to know what they were doing, | 0:04:02 | 0:04:04 | |
I want to know why they left, I want to know why it's under water now. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
I want to make that immediate connection with people | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
and just get a brief insight, even just for a moment, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
of what it was like to live in those times in the Bronze Age. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:17 | |
To answer these questions | 0:04:20 | 0:04:21 | |
and learn about the origins of our own way of life, | 0:04:21 | 0:04:25 | |
Jon wants to try and recreate the city in every detail. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:29 | |
He's flown in a team from Sydney University, | 0:04:31 | 0:04:34 | |
led by Oscar Pizzaro | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
and Matt Johnson Roberson. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
They've brought with them prototype mapping devices to create | 0:04:39 | 0:04:43 | |
three-dimensional surveys of the site. | 0:04:43 | 0:04:46 | |
This idea of using | 0:04:48 | 0:04:49 | |
3D reconstruction is a very new thing for archaeology | 0:04:49 | 0:04:51 | |
From that perspective it's exciting for us. | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
Working alongside the scientists, | 0:04:56 | 0:04:58 | |
Jon has also invited movie visual effects expert Simon Clarke. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:02 | |
So this is not too far off, then... | 0:05:02 | 0:05:05 | |
He wants him to try to digitally recreate Pavlopetri, | 0:05:05 | 0:05:07 | |
using the actual archaeological data. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:11 | |
Our role is basically to try and recreate the finds, | 0:05:12 | 0:05:15 | |
to recreate the buildings and then hopefully | 0:05:15 | 0:05:17 | |
to give a fantastic impression of what the city would have once looked like. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:22 | |
Working in collaboration with | 0:05:24 | 0:05:25 | |
a team from the Greek Ephorate of Underwater Antiquities, | 0:05:25 | 0:05:29 | |
they've been granted a three-week permit to complete their work. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:32 | |
After a year of planning, | 0:05:39 | 0:05:40 | |
the archaeologists head out for the first dive of the expedition. | 0:05:40 | 0:05:44 | |
The first step to understanding what life was like in Pavlopetri | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
thousands of years ago, | 0:05:54 | 0:05:56 | |
is to search for items the inhabitants left behind. | 0:05:56 | 0:05:59 | |
This is part of a bowl. | 0:06:07 | 0:06:09 | |
A Bronze Age bowl. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:11 | |
Maybe for cooking your soup, your lentil stew in. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:17 | |
The team get help from the sea itself. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:21 | |
The shifting underwater currents naturally excavate the site, | 0:06:21 | 0:06:24 | |
constantly bringing new artefacts to the surface. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:27 | |
Part of a rather nice jug there. | 0:06:30 | 0:06:34 | |
For pouring water or pouring wine. | 0:06:34 | 0:06:36 | |
Every object they find is photographed, | 0:06:42 | 0:06:45 | |
before it's labelled and bagged. | 0:06:45 | 0:06:48 | |
Its location is then recorded using a pole with a prism on top | 0:06:49 | 0:06:54 | |
which reflects back a laser beam | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
sent out by a land-based ranging device. | 0:06:57 | 0:06:59 | |
With their knowledge of artefacts from other sites, | 0:07:03 | 0:07:06 | |
the archaeologists immediately have an idea of what the objects | 0:07:06 | 0:07:10 | |
might be and even how they were used. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
See, that is quite a nice find. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
We've got a base of a bowl. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
It had a bowl coming up here. It's quite finely made. | 0:07:21 | 0:07:24 | |
Probably one of the better pieces that you bring out | 0:07:24 | 0:07:29 | |
when your guests come round. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:31 | |
It takes a highly-trained eye to make out | 0:07:34 | 0:07:36 | |
some of the more obscure artefacts. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:38 | |
This is how they would have ground their grain or ground their lentils. | 0:07:42 | 0:07:46 | |
They would have got a rounded stone | 0:07:46 | 0:07:49 | |
and just ground the grain down, | 0:07:49 | 0:07:50 | |
grinding cereals, | 0:07:50 | 0:07:53 | |
grinding pulses for food. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:55 | |
This is just a general domestic item. But that's nice. | 0:07:55 | 0:08:00 | |
With all the finds bagged and tagged, | 0:08:09 | 0:08:12 | |
they are sent off to the processing area back at base camp. | 0:08:12 | 0:08:16 | |
As part of his role to create a detailed | 0:08:24 | 0:08:26 | |
view of life in Pavlopetri, | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
visual effects supervisor Simon Clarke | 0:08:29 | 0:08:32 | |
wants to rebuild some of the key finds from the site. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:35 | |
Using a laser scanner, he can digitally capture | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
the exact 3D structure and surface textures of each sherd. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:44 | |
We've got something which is totally real | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
so we are making our pot, when we reconstruct it, | 0:08:52 | 0:08:55 | |
as scientifically accurate as we possibly can. | 0:08:55 | 0:08:57 | |
Using the laser scans, the visual effects team can now start to | 0:09:00 | 0:09:03 | |
reconstruct some of the ancient artefacts. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:06 | |
They've sought guidance from Jon's finds expert, Dr Chrysanthi Gallou. | 0:09:09 | 0:09:13 | |
This is an open vessel, | 0:09:15 | 0:09:18 | |
we can say so because it is decorated in the interior. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:22 | |
This looks quite thick here. Would that be the thickness all the way through? | 0:09:22 | 0:09:26 | |
No, I would guess like it gets a little bit opening here | 0:09:26 | 0:09:29 | |
and then get thinner as we move up. | 0:09:29 | 0:09:32 | |
Even the simplest of artefacts can be hard to recognise at first. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:37 | |
-I don't think it's like that! -Whoops! | 0:09:39 | 0:09:42 | |
The neck should be higher. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:44 | |
Yeah, I mean, so these shapes now look very familiar. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:46 | |
Definitely. The same needs bring the same shapes. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:51 | |
By rebuilding the finds, | 0:09:53 | 0:09:55 | |
the team can start peering into the everyday lives of the inhabitants. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
The simple cooking wares used for soups. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:02 | |
The fine crockery that was brought out for guests. | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
These were fired at high temperatures to give | 0:10:08 | 0:10:10 | |
a resounding clink when struck together. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
And for very special occasions, including funeral rites, | 0:10:15 | 0:10:19 | |
they used a large two-handled goblet known as a kylix. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:23 | |
The site is actually just strewn with pottery. | 0:10:33 | 0:10:36 | |
This is the table wares they used. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:38 | |
It's high status vessels they used when they had guests round for tea. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:41 | |
It's the vessels they used to make offerings towards the gods. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:45 | |
We can touch the people of the past through touching their pottery. | 0:10:45 | 0:10:48 | |
Many of the pieces found from the site are coming from | 0:10:49 | 0:10:52 | |
what is known as the Mycenaean period, | 0:10:52 | 0:10:55 | |
dating from 1600 to 1100BC. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:59 | |
The Mycenaeans were a warrior people | 0:11:04 | 0:11:07 | |
led by wealthy and powerful rulers, | 0:11:07 | 0:11:09 | |
like the legendary King Agamemnon. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:12 | |
At the heart of their civilisation was a network | 0:11:14 | 0:11:17 | |
of hilltop fortresses. | 0:11:17 | 0:11:19 | |
The most famous was at Mycenae. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:22 | |
Legend has it | 0:11:27 | 0:11:28 | |
that these walls were so huge | 0:11:28 | 0:11:30 | |
they were built by one-eyed giants, the Cyclops, | 0:11:30 | 0:11:34 | |
since no mere mortal could have built them. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:36 | |
From their network of fortresses, | 0:11:39 | 0:11:41 | |
they used their military might to control trade throughout this whole region of Greece. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:45 | |
Trade that would have passed through harbour towns, | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
like the one at Pavlopetri. | 0:11:51 | 0:11:53 | |
But unlike the well-documented city of Mycenae, | 0:11:58 | 0:12:00 | |
no mention has been found for a port at Pavlopetri. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
It lay forgotten under the waves for over 3,000 years | 0:12:07 | 0:12:10 | |
until it was discovered purely by chance. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:12 | |
In 1967, oceanographer Dr Nic Fleming was | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
working along the coastline, searching for ancient harbours, | 0:12:22 | 0:12:25 | |
when he stumbled upon the ruins. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:28 | |
I looked at these rows of stones and I just had no idea what it was | 0:12:30 | 0:12:34 | |
but I realised, immediately, that it was man-made, | 0:12:34 | 0:12:38 | |
that we were looking at a large part of a town. | 0:12:38 | 0:12:41 | |
And, I mean, I just went crazy. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:44 | |
I grabbed my plastic board and started scribbling | 0:12:44 | 0:12:48 | |
and drawing and everything. | 0:12:48 | 0:12:49 | |
I had been arrogant enough when I was in Athens | 0:12:51 | 0:12:53 | |
to write in the visitors' book, | 0:12:53 | 0:12:55 | |
"Gone south to look for Bronze Age harbours." | 0:12:55 | 0:12:59 | |
So, here we were in the south, | 0:12:59 | 0:13:00 | |
and we'd found a Bronze Age harbour. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
So I was very pleased! | 0:13:03 | 0:13:04 | |
The following year, Nic returned to the site with | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
a group of students from Cambridge University. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:12 | |
Armed with just tape measures and pencils, | 0:13:16 | 0:13:19 | |
the group attempted to survey the site for the first time. | 0:13:19 | 0:13:22 | |
I mean, all surveying tapes were sort of canvas, | 0:13:24 | 0:13:27 | |
but they weren't really waterproof. | 0:13:27 | 0:13:29 | |
You took them in the water and it started to stretch and fray. | 0:13:29 | 0:13:32 | |
Things were measured with tape and string simply to triangulate, | 0:13:35 | 0:13:39 | |
measure the two sides of a triangle | 0:13:39 | 0:13:41 | |
off the baseline, and gradually build up the map. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:45 | |
Using basic techniques, | 0:13:45 | 0:13:47 | |
the university team created the very first survey map of Pavlopetri. | 0:13:47 | 0:13:52 | |
The town appeared to consist of 15 buildings located off two main streets, | 0:13:54 | 0:13:59 | |
with an area extending to just under four football pitches. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:03 | |
Here you've got rows of houses on a street. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:07 | |
The preservation is incredible. | 0:14:07 | 0:14:10 | |
There is absolutely nothing like it. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:12 | |
Since the 1960s, no-one has done any further survey work | 0:14:15 | 0:14:18 | |
on this important site. | 0:14:18 | 0:14:20 | |
Until now. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:21 | |
To get an idea of the full extent of the ruins | 0:14:25 | 0:14:28 | |
and the area where the city once stood, | 0:14:28 | 0:14:30 | |
Jon is taking to the sky. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
This is the first time he's seen Pavlopetri from the air. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:51 | |
Woah! Ha ha. I'm glad I didn't eat now! | 0:14:52 | 0:14:57 | |
Many of the buildings that Nic surveyed in the '60s can be seen. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
But beyond the original mapped area, | 0:15:06 | 0:15:08 | |
something catches Jon's eye. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
I think I can see new buildings just off Pavlopetri island. | 0:15:12 | 0:15:16 | |
And I can see lines of what I think are buildings, | 0:15:20 | 0:15:22 | |
square lines - that makes the site much, much bigger. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:26 | |
It's bigger now to the north and bigger to the south, | 0:15:26 | 0:15:29 | |
so that's a pretty major discovery. | 0:15:29 | 0:15:32 | |
From his high vantage point, | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
Jon starts to see how the city could have operated as a harbour. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
You would have had ships coming in, | 0:15:42 | 0:15:44 | |
trading through the whole of the eastern Mediterranean, trading with people of this city. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:49 | |
The site would have been sitting right at the entrance of a sandy bay | 0:15:49 | 0:15:53 | |
and that would have been an ideal location for beaching ships. | 0:15:53 | 0:15:57 | |
That was what a Bronze Age harbour was, | 0:15:57 | 0:16:00 | |
a protected sandy bay. | 0:16:00 | 0:16:02 | |
It's incredibly exciting | 0:16:05 | 0:16:06 | |
because it's suddenly putting the site in context. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
Jon also spots clues which could help work out how the city | 0:16:10 | 0:16:14 | |
succumbed to its watery grave. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:17 | |
The other exciting thing that we've seen is old shore lines, | 0:16:18 | 0:16:22 | |
and this is perhaps a clue as to how the site went under water. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:27 | |
So the city is bigger than originally thought | 0:16:29 | 0:16:32 | |
and was located in the perfect spot for a harbour. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:34 | |
But to understand how it functioned as a whole, | 0:16:36 | 0:16:39 | |
Jon is keen to start a detailed survey. | 0:16:39 | 0:16:41 | |
Rather than string and tape measures, | 0:16:51 | 0:16:53 | |
he's bringing underwater archaeology into the 21st century. | 0:16:53 | 0:16:58 | |
You'll see this whole range of buildings there.... | 0:16:58 | 0:17:02 | |
The team of scientists from Sydney University have been | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
researching ways to produce a 3D photo map of the sea floor. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:09 | |
They've built a prototype push-along device called a diver rig. | 0:17:11 | 0:17:15 | |
The diver rig is basically just a surfboard with | 0:17:15 | 0:17:17 | |
a pair of cameras mounted on it. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:19 | |
So the same way you can use your left and your right eye | 0:17:19 | 0:17:22 | |
to figure out the distance of things, | 0:17:22 | 0:17:24 | |
the diver rig uses two cameras to figure out | 0:17:24 | 0:17:26 | |
the distance to rocks on the sea floor. | 0:17:26 | 0:17:28 | |
So from that we can build up a 3D model of all the stones on the site | 0:17:28 | 0:17:31 | |
just using those two pictures. | 0:17:31 | 0:17:33 | |
It allows you to feel like you're actually there, | 0:17:33 | 0:17:36 | |
sitting on the bottom. | 0:17:36 | 0:17:38 | |
Pushed back and forth over the survey area, | 0:17:41 | 0:17:44 | |
the rig takes thousands of digital photos of the sea floor. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
Harsh shadows caused by bright overhead sunlight were | 0:17:50 | 0:17:53 | |
confusing the software, so the work is carried out at dusk. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:57 | |
The first results are very promising. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:01 | |
We imaged the side and the edge of a very small building in the site | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
just to see if we could see the individual stones. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:09 | |
And it's really exciting because we actually could. | 0:18:09 | 0:18:12 | |
If you look here you can see, we can count the individual rocks | 0:18:12 | 0:18:15 | |
which build up the foundation of this building. | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
It's a really unique look under the sea. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:20 | |
The equivalent of draining the ocean, taking pictures and filling it back up. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:24 | |
Using the push-along rig, | 0:18:27 | 0:18:29 | |
they continue to survey key parts of the site. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
But to be able to map the whole city, | 0:18:34 | 0:18:36 | |
including the new buildings Jon saw from the air, | 0:18:36 | 0:18:39 | |
the Australian team have been developing a secret weapon. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:43 | |
At first glance, it may look like a torpedo, | 0:18:46 | 0:18:49 | |
but this is the very latest in autonomous underwater robotics. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
In addition to the diver-held unit, we've brought a proper robot. | 0:18:55 | 0:19:00 | |
It has a much better suite of navigation instruments | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
that allow us | 0:19:03 | 0:19:05 | |
to build a better map more easily, cover more ground, | 0:19:05 | 0:19:07 | |
and avoids the tedious aspect of having to swim around | 0:19:07 | 0:19:12 | |
with a camera when you're trying to cover a large area. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
The mapping torpedo stands at the cutting edge of underwater archaeology. | 0:19:19 | 0:19:24 | |
As the robot has never been used before, | 0:19:24 | 0:19:26 | |
it still needs further testing before they let it lose on the site. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
They hope to survey the entire city, | 0:19:32 | 0:19:34 | |
completing the job in a matter of days. | 0:19:34 | 0:19:36 | |
The 3D photo mapping data will eventually be used to help | 0:19:43 | 0:19:48 | |
digitally rebuild the city. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:51 | |
But to get the visual effects team up and running, | 0:19:51 | 0:19:55 | |
Jon has a line-drawn site plan to give them an overview. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
How am I able to identify what are buildings and what are streets? | 0:20:00 | 0:20:03 | |
The red lines there are picking out the streets | 0:20:03 | 0:20:06 | |
so we have five or six main streets that we've recognised so far. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:10 | |
We have a main street going up here, a street up there, a street running along this reef. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:16 | |
The blue lines are actually marking out | 0:20:16 | 0:20:18 | |
building complexes. These are the domestic structures, the houses. | 0:20:18 | 0:20:22 | |
Then we have yellow, which is marking out courtyards. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:25 | |
There's a lot of open space in this city. There was probably people | 0:20:25 | 0:20:29 | |
out, you know, threshing, drying their clothes, | 0:20:29 | 0:20:32 | |
grinding their cereals and so on, | 0:20:32 | 0:20:34 | |
and talking to their neighbours probably. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:37 | |
We can tell they're courtyards because they have less stone, | 0:20:37 | 0:20:40 | |
less rubble, they have lower walls. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
Is there any evidence to suggest... | 0:20:42 | 0:20:45 | |
The visual effects team can now start to extrude the walls | 0:20:45 | 0:20:48 | |
of some of the buildings directly on top of the archaeological site plan. | 0:20:48 | 0:20:53 | |
..probably paving. | 0:20:53 | 0:20:54 | |
How are the buildings split up in terms of division of rooms? | 0:20:54 | 0:20:57 | |
What you've got is you've got a range of buildings | 0:20:57 | 0:21:01 | |
around a courtyard, so you've got I think, about one, two, three, | 0:21:01 | 0:21:05 | |
four, five, six separate rooms at the least | 0:21:05 | 0:21:08 | |
around a courtyard with an entrance into it. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
The walls are more or less correct, | 0:21:11 | 0:21:14 | |
but we've got work to do with the height of some of them. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:17 | |
Although the foundations of much of Pavlopetri have been preserved, | 0:21:17 | 0:21:23 | |
rebuilding the city will have to be based to some extent | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
on interpretation. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:28 | |
Fortunately, rare yet vital clues exist from other Bronze Age sites. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:33 | |
This fresco from the ancient city of Akrotiri, | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
on the Greek island of Thera, | 0:21:42 | 0:21:44 | |
is one of the only depictions of a Bronze Age town. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
It dates to 1550 BC, and shows neighbourhoods | 0:21:49 | 0:21:53 | |
of neat brickwork buildings, even roof terraces. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:56 | |
The fresco also indicates this was a time | 0:21:59 | 0:22:01 | |
when people took to the sea and began widespread maritime trade. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:06 | |
To find clues to Pavlopetri's trade links, | 0:22:18 | 0:22:21 | |
the archaeologists are expanding their search of the site. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:25 | |
Quite delicate, you can see the base of it. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:30 | |
It would have sat like that. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:32 | |
This probably dates to 2000BC. | 0:22:34 | 0:22:37 | |
This is one of three legs for a standing bowl, | 0:22:41 | 0:22:45 | |
so it would have been about this size. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:47 | |
They're finding objects that date from almost 2000 years | 0:22:51 | 0:22:54 | |
before the Mycenaean period. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:56 | |
This implies the site may be much older than first thought. | 0:22:56 | 0:23:01 | |
Jon also starts to find key evidence of local industry. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
This is a loom weight. You can see its got a hole in it | 0:23:10 | 0:23:15 | |
for hanging on a loom, for preparing textiles and making textiles, | 0:23:15 | 0:23:19 | |
so we know that they were making clothes here. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:22 | |
We've got literally hundreds of these on the sea floor. | 0:23:24 | 0:23:27 | |
These loom weights, these are used for hanging | 0:23:27 | 0:23:30 | |
from a loom for making textiles essentially. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
They must have been making it on a very large scale. | 0:23:33 | 0:23:36 | |
Maybe even an industrial scale. | 0:23:36 | 0:23:37 | |
Maybe this is one of the main things that they were sending out | 0:23:37 | 0:23:41 | |
into the Eastern Mediterranean and trading with other cultures. | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
This is a significant discovery | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
and suggests a thriving textile industry. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:50 | |
And with trade, there would have been wealth. | 0:23:52 | 0:23:55 | |
Even the most innocuous finds | 0:23:55 | 0:23:57 | |
tell an elaborate story. | 0:23:57 | 0:24:00 | |
This is quite an exciting find | 0:24:01 | 0:24:03 | |
because it's a roof tile | 0:24:03 | 0:24:05 | |
and you only get roof tiles on sites with quite serious buildings. | 0:24:05 | 0:24:08 | |
Important buildings have roof tiles. | 0:24:08 | 0:24:11 | |
It's a good find. | 0:24:11 | 0:24:13 | |
Your average house would have had a flat timber roof | 0:24:17 | 0:24:20 | |
but once we've got roofs with roof tiles on it, | 0:24:20 | 0:24:23 | |
it makes you think somebody important is living there. | 0:24:23 | 0:24:26 | |
The building is saying something about the inhabitants, it's more monumental | 0:24:26 | 0:24:30 | |
So it's raising the status of this town. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:32 | |
Previously thought to be just a harbour town, we now think | 0:24:32 | 0:24:35 | |
it's a city, we're now getting big buildings | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
and evidence of big architecture. | 0:24:38 | 0:24:40 | |
To help better understand the possible structure | 0:24:48 | 0:24:51 | |
of the buildings of Pavlopetri, | 0:24:51 | 0:24:52 | |
Jon is taking Simon | 0:24:52 | 0:24:54 | |
to an old farmhouse in a nearby village. | 0:24:54 | 0:24:57 | |
Jon sees architectural similarities that span the millennia. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:04 | |
Almost everything you've got here, the sort of general layout | 0:25:07 | 0:25:11 | |
of a 100-year-old farmstead up to the modern day, | 0:25:11 | 0:25:13 | |
we can see at Pavlopetri. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
And that shows you how advanced Pavlopetri was. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
Perhaps the only difference is the building complexes in Pavlopetri. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
There are a range of rooms built around a courtyard. | 0:25:21 | 0:25:24 | |
Rather than an isolated building like this. | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
It's remarkable that house design in this area appears to have | 0:25:30 | 0:25:34 | |
changed very little in the last 3,000 years. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:37 | |
The stones here would be like stone foundations of Pavlopetri. | 0:25:39 | 0:25:42 | |
Then on top of that you would have the clay and timber framework. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:45 | |
We think the design of the buildings | 0:25:47 | 0:25:49 | |
has something to do with resistance to earthquakes. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:52 | |
We are in a very, very active tectonic zone, | 0:25:52 | 0:25:54 | |
probably one of the most active earthquake areas in the world. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
And, as a result, we think that the foundations of the buildings | 0:25:58 | 0:26:01 | |
were made out of stone, supporting a timber framework, | 0:26:01 | 0:26:04 | |
plastered with clay or with mud bricks, | 0:26:04 | 0:26:06 | |
because that would move in an earthquake, it would be less likely to collapse. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
Would they have all been pitched roofs or would some be flat as well? | 0:26:13 | 0:26:17 | |
I think at Pavlopetri we've probably got both. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:19 | |
And I say that because we found quite a range of roof tiles | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
with actual ridges on them, for hanging them along a pitched roof. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:26 | |
So very similar to this. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:28 | |
To make his digital recreations as accurate as possible, | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
Simon wants to know what colour to paint the houses. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:35 | |
Jon draws inspiration from the Bronze Age frescos. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:41 | |
'It might have been a mark of status | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
'that there would be different colours for different buildings.' | 0:26:44 | 0:26:47 | |
We know they were using yellow ochres and red oxides | 0:26:47 | 0:26:50 | |
to produce a range of colours from sort of pink to browns. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:53 | |
So, it was... it's a city awash with colour. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
People are living there, it's an exciting place. I want to capture that. | 0:26:56 | 0:27:00 | |
Back at the site, Jon is convinced that two of the large buildings | 0:27:13 | 0:27:17 | |
just off the main high street | 0:27:17 | 0:27:20 | |
are prime examples of domestic dwellings. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:22 | |
Here we have possibly one of the first neighbourhoods | 0:27:22 | 0:27:25 | |
on mainland Europe. | 0:27:25 | 0:27:28 | |
So this here is the entrance | 0:27:30 | 0:27:32 | |
to a Bronze Age house where people would have been living | 0:27:32 | 0:27:36 | |
about 3,000- 4,000 years ago. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:39 | |
So what we have is a square, ground floor room | 0:27:39 | 0:27:44 | |
and we've got the entrance doorway here | 0:27:44 | 0:27:48 | |
marked by a stone threshold. | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
And on this there would have been built | 0:27:50 | 0:27:53 | |
a wooden doorway, an entrance into this building. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:58 | |
What we actually see on this site are just the foundation walls. | 0:27:59 | 0:28:05 | |
And on top of these walls you would have had a timber framework... | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
..and then either mud brick or clay and plaster walls. | 0:28:18 | 0:28:21 | |
In a number of the houses we have, sunk into the floor, | 0:28:26 | 0:28:32 | |
the bottoms of storage vessels. | 0:28:32 | 0:28:34 | |
This is probably where they were storing the grain, | 0:28:34 | 0:28:37 | |
perhaps wine or olive oil. | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
Um, it's a bit like a sort of Bronze Age fridge. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:45 | |
Jon believes the people living here would have had bedrooms upstairs. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:55 | |
The walls and the connections | 0:28:55 | 0:28:57 | |
suggest that it's probably more than one storey high. | 0:28:57 | 0:29:01 | |
It was probably a two-storey building. | 0:29:01 | 0:29:03 | |
These villas are made up of possibly seven to ten rooms. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:13 | |
While the ground floor may have been used for storage | 0:29:15 | 0:29:19 | |
and possibly keeping animals, | 0:29:19 | 0:29:22 | |
wooden staircases would have led up | 0:29:22 | 0:29:24 | |
to living quarters on a second floor, | 0:29:24 | 0:29:25 | |
with windows and possibly a terrace. | 0:29:25 | 0:29:29 | |
So this is maybe just a little glimpse of prehistoric suburbia. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:42 | |
From their discoveries, the team now believe | 0:29:55 | 0:29:58 | |
there were some important, wealthy people living in Pavlopetri | 0:29:58 | 0:30:02 | |
and that it was a harbour town that thrived on trade, possibly textiles. | 0:30:02 | 0:30:07 | |
Just down the high street from the domestic dwellings, | 0:30:11 | 0:30:14 | |
one of the other prominent buildings has caught Jon's attention. | 0:30:14 | 0:30:18 | |
There's so much evidence of storage here. | 0:30:26 | 0:30:29 | |
There's so many broken pieces of storage vessels | 0:30:29 | 0:30:32 | |
way beyond what somebody would need just for a normal house. | 0:30:32 | 0:30:37 | |
And that makes us think that this is a building | 0:30:37 | 0:30:39 | |
of a different function to the houses elsewhere on the site, | 0:30:39 | 0:30:42 | |
and perhaps this is some sort of administrative function. | 0:30:42 | 0:30:47 | |
So if that's true, this might be one of the most important buildings on the site. | 0:30:47 | 0:30:52 | |
The building appears to have had several narrow oblong rooms | 0:30:54 | 0:30:57 | |
located at the back. | 0:30:57 | 0:30:59 | |
In one of these are the remains of a huge ceramic jar called a pithos. | 0:30:59 | 0:31:06 | |
This is the edge of a 4,000-year-old storage vessel. | 0:31:07 | 0:31:12 | |
And you can see the handle of the storage vessel, | 0:31:12 | 0:31:16 | |
and we know that there is at least half a metre of deposit | 0:31:16 | 0:31:21 | |
to excavate underneath here. | 0:31:21 | 0:31:23 | |
'There's a pithos sitting just in that building' | 0:31:26 | 0:31:29 | |
right in the middle there which we've actually marked... | 0:31:29 | 0:31:32 | |
Back at base, Jon has brought his findings to the attention of | 0:31:32 | 0:31:36 | |
the co-director of the project, Ilias Spondylis from the Greek team. | 0:31:36 | 0:31:41 | |
-Then we get the number, lift it and it's out. -OK. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:43 | |
So we don't have to measure... | 0:31:43 | 0:31:45 | |
He's agreed for a small excavation to take place | 0:31:45 | 0:31:48 | |
to try and lift the large pithos jar. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:52 | |
This is the first ever excavation on the site. | 0:31:52 | 0:31:56 | |
The Greek team establish the boundaries of the dig site... | 0:32:02 | 0:32:05 | |
..and set up what is known as a water dredge. | 0:32:06 | 0:32:10 | |
The basic underwater technique of excavation, | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
it's not a trowel, it's not a spade, it's just your hands, OK? | 0:32:16 | 0:32:19 | |
With a water dredge. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:21 | |
It effectively works like a vacuum cleaner, | 0:32:23 | 0:32:27 | |
and it allows us to very carefully | 0:32:27 | 0:32:29 | |
remove sand and silt around artefacts. | 0:32:29 | 0:32:33 | |
The sand and silt gets sucked up | 0:32:39 | 0:32:41 | |
and deposited several metres from the dig. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
Throughout the next few days, | 0:32:47 | 0:32:49 | |
the excavation proceeds under the direction of the Greek team, | 0:32:49 | 0:32:53 | |
with the divers working in shifts. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:55 | |
It's a very delicate operation. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:57 | |
This is the top of it, this is the top rim. | 0:32:59 | 0:33:03 | |
These are the handles for actually moving it around, | 0:33:03 | 0:33:06 | |
and maybe, you know, lifting it onto ships or with ropes, or so on. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:11 | |
You would use them in your house, you could sink them in your floor. | 0:33:11 | 0:33:14 | |
But equally they were used for transporting | 0:33:14 | 0:33:18 | |
all sorts of items in the Bronze Age. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:20 | |
Everything from wine, olive oil, grain, to ceramics. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:25 | |
You actually sometimes find smaller pots inside these vessels. | 0:33:25 | 0:33:29 | |
In the corner of the excavation, a second pithos starts to emerge. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:42 | |
This adds weight to Jon's suggestion | 0:33:42 | 0:33:45 | |
that the building was some sort of storage depot. | 0:33:45 | 0:33:48 | |
These jars could give clues as to who the city was trading with. | 0:33:48 | 0:33:52 | |
Jon wants to try something never done before. | 0:33:57 | 0:34:00 | |
He's asked the mapping team to use the push-along survey unit | 0:34:00 | 0:34:04 | |
to see if they can produce a daily 3D photo map | 0:34:04 | 0:34:07 | |
of the trench as it's being excavated. | 0:34:07 | 0:34:10 | |
As night falls, the team download the data | 0:34:23 | 0:34:27 | |
to see if the plan has worked. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:29 | |
There's a new part in this corner, can you tell? | 0:34:29 | 0:34:31 | |
Stitching together the photos, | 0:34:31 | 0:34:33 | |
it looks like they have been successful. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:38 | |
So far it looks quite convincing, you can see that | 0:34:38 | 0:34:41 | |
outside of the trench, most of the site is recognisable. | 0:34:41 | 0:34:46 | |
You can see more of the main pithos, the jar, the clay jar. | 0:34:46 | 0:34:51 | |
But you can also start to see perhaps another jar | 0:34:51 | 0:34:53 | |
coming up in a corner, | 0:34:53 | 0:34:55 | |
and perhaps a bit of burnt coal or something on another area. | 0:34:55 | 0:35:00 | |
Real time 3D photo mapping | 0:35:01 | 0:35:03 | |
of an active underwater excavation has never been done before. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:08 | |
So we can look at the evolution of the trench over a period of time. | 0:35:09 | 0:35:14 | |
Which should show us what they've been doing every day, | 0:35:14 | 0:35:18 | |
with the excavation. | 0:35:18 | 0:35:20 | |
This is great for archaeology because you can then, in a sense, re-excavate the site. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:25 | |
It'll allow us to step back through time | 0:35:25 | 0:35:27 | |
and see each layer of the site individually. | 0:35:27 | 0:35:29 | |
And as opposed to having to record everything manually, | 0:35:29 | 0:35:33 | |
now you can record everything visually and then, preserve it. | 0:35:33 | 0:35:36 | |
So it speeds things up quite quickly. | 0:35:36 | 0:35:39 | |
You get more accurate plans than you would have done drawing them. | 0:35:39 | 0:35:43 | |
The excavation doesn't just help understand | 0:35:49 | 0:35:52 | |
what was going on in this building, | 0:35:52 | 0:35:55 | |
but also how the city itself | 0:35:55 | 0:35:58 | |
fitted into the wider Mediterranean world. | 0:35:58 | 0:36:01 | |
You can just see these little circular... | 0:36:05 | 0:36:09 | |
decoration pieces on it. | 0:36:09 | 0:36:11 | |
If I just get it a bit clearer there. | 0:36:11 | 0:36:15 | |
They're just stamped on when the clay is still wet. | 0:36:15 | 0:36:18 | |
This decoration went right round it. | 0:36:18 | 0:36:20 | |
This vessel probably came from Crete. | 0:36:20 | 0:36:24 | |
The design and build of this pithos jar | 0:36:30 | 0:36:32 | |
suggests it was made between 1700 and 1500BC. | 0:36:32 | 0:36:37 | |
It would have been used for storage | 0:36:37 | 0:36:40 | |
or transportation of a range of goods. | 0:36:40 | 0:36:43 | |
The pithos is similar to hundreds that have been found | 0:36:43 | 0:36:47 | |
within the ancient palace of Knossos on the island of Crete. | 0:36:47 | 0:36:51 | |
Crete is the largest of the Greek islands | 0:36:53 | 0:36:56 | |
and lies south-east of Pavlopetri. | 0:36:56 | 0:36:59 | |
It was home to the Minoan civilisation | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
dating back over 5,000 years. | 0:37:07 | 0:37:09 | |
Knossos was their most lavish of palaces, | 0:37:12 | 0:37:15 | |
boasting over 1,500 rooms, running water and even flushing toilets. | 0:37:15 | 0:37:22 | |
Minoan palaces weren't fortified. | 0:37:26 | 0:37:29 | |
Their civilisation thrived without any great military strength. | 0:37:29 | 0:37:33 | |
They had a strict social hierarchy, | 0:37:33 | 0:37:36 | |
were pioneers of writing, | 0:37:36 | 0:37:38 | |
and flourished through trade. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:40 | |
Minoan cultural influence spread far beyond the island of Crete, | 0:37:42 | 0:37:46 | |
not by military might... | 0:37:46 | 0:37:48 | |
..but by a network of trade routes | 0:37:49 | 0:37:51 | |
reaching all corners of the Mediterranean. | 0:37:51 | 0:37:55 | |
Just up the coast from Crete, on the island of Kythera, | 0:37:55 | 0:37:59 | |
was a Minoan colony called Kastri. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:01 | |
There's strong evidence that Minoan traders lived there... | 0:38:01 | 0:38:05 | |
..and trading links would have extended north to the mainland. | 0:38:06 | 0:38:10 | |
Right through Pavlopetri. | 0:38:10 | 0:38:12 | |
Jon believes the city was an active trading hub, | 0:38:20 | 0:38:23 | |
seeing the passage of imports and exports | 0:38:23 | 0:38:26 | |
from all over Bronze Age Greece. | 0:38:26 | 0:38:28 | |
The key to understanding Pavlopetri is the location. | 0:38:30 | 0:38:33 | |
It's basically at the gateway of the mainland Peloponnese. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:37 | |
If you're trading anything, sailing from the eastern Mediterranean | 0:38:37 | 0:38:40 | |
and you're coming into mainland Greece, | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
you've got to pass by Pavlopetri to get up towards Sparta. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:48 | |
So just its very location meant that it was always going to be | 0:38:48 | 0:38:51 | |
a good place to have a settlement by the sea. | 0:38:51 | 0:38:54 | |
Back at base camp, | 0:39:00 | 0:39:01 | |
the visual effects team continue with their work | 0:39:01 | 0:39:05 | |
to digitally rebuild the city. | 0:39:05 | 0:39:08 | |
They've started reconstructing the storeroom building. | 0:39:08 | 0:39:11 | |
What's your first impression of that? | 0:39:11 | 0:39:13 | |
I'd say it looks fantastic, I'm really excited by it. | 0:39:13 | 0:39:16 | |
There's a few things I would change now. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:19 | |
This part here, I think probably wasn't roofed. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:21 | |
And I know why you've done that. I think this courtyard, | 0:39:21 | 0:39:24 | |
there may have been some sort of entranceway, | 0:39:24 | 0:39:27 | |
there may have been something demarking that. | 0:39:27 | 0:39:29 | |
With his knowledge of other Greek Bronze Age settlements, | 0:39:29 | 0:39:33 | |
Jon can use the reconstruction to piece together | 0:39:33 | 0:39:36 | |
what may have happened within the building. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:39 | |
Seeing it like this is really making me think about | 0:39:40 | 0:39:43 | |
how this building worked. | 0:39:43 | 0:39:45 | |
Maybe you had carts coming in here, filled with goods, | 0:39:45 | 0:39:48 | |
and they're unloading and then taking them into here. | 0:39:48 | 0:39:50 | |
If you imagine it almost like a public council building, | 0:39:50 | 0:39:54 | |
you go into the first room and it's probably a waiting room, | 0:39:54 | 0:39:57 | |
with a bureaucrat waiting to record what you've just brought in. | 0:39:57 | 0:40:00 | |
At the front of the building were the admin offices | 0:40:08 | 0:40:11 | |
where imports and exports may have been checked in and out. | 0:40:11 | 0:40:15 | |
Towards the rear, located in the long, narrow outhouses, | 0:40:22 | 0:40:26 | |
the large pithos jars would have stored items ready for dispersal. | 0:40:26 | 0:40:31 | |
We had people here capable of complex administration, | 0:40:38 | 0:40:41 | |
complex buildings and sort of an almost modern way of life. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:46 | |
We can identify with this. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:47 | |
The city not only shows evidence of local administration | 0:40:52 | 0:40:56 | |
and organised trade, | 0:40:56 | 0:40:58 | |
but it's starting to look like | 0:40:58 | 0:41:00 | |
they were actively trading with the Minoans on Crete. | 0:41:00 | 0:41:04 | |
With their time on the site rapidly coming to an end, | 0:41:07 | 0:41:11 | |
the team are finding more and more older artefacts. | 0:41:11 | 0:41:15 | |
So this is quite an exciting find... | 0:41:21 | 0:41:25 | |
..dating to around 4,000 years ago. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:32 | |
You can just see the ropework-like design. | 0:41:33 | 0:41:37 | |
This is great, so let's get it lifted up. | 0:41:38 | 0:41:41 | |
As well as storage vessels, | 0:41:44 | 0:41:46 | |
a strong Cretan influence is now coming through | 0:41:46 | 0:41:50 | |
with the domestic wares. | 0:41:50 | 0:41:52 | |
Absolutely fantastic. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
Well found. It looks absolutely brilliant. | 0:41:55 | 0:41:58 | |
We can recognise it as a palatial amphora, | 0:41:58 | 0:42:02 | |
that's the new palace period in Crete. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:05 | |
It's a really diagnostic shape, | 0:42:05 | 0:42:08 | |
we can put it about 1700, 1600 BC. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:11 | |
It's a pouring vessel, a jug essentially, | 0:42:11 | 0:42:14 | |
but it's a really brilliant find, it's in great condition | 0:42:14 | 0:42:18 | |
and it's giving us a really nice, tight date | 0:42:18 | 0:42:21 | |
of something that's going on around here. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:23 | |
The Cretan-influenced finds | 0:42:28 | 0:42:30 | |
don't just mean the city is older than first thought. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:34 | |
They are starting to reveal Pavlopetri as a cultural melting pot. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:40 | |
We're beginning to get things | 0:42:40 | 0:42:41 | |
that are putting us directly in touch with the people. | 0:42:41 | 0:42:44 | |
You can imagine, you know, somebody 4,000 years ago was using | 0:42:44 | 0:42:48 | |
this little pot lid, and it's still complete. | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
The same with this little bottle for pouring some sort of liquid. | 0:42:51 | 0:42:55 | |
We have this situation where we have the people of Pavlopetri | 0:42:56 | 0:43:00 | |
copying Cretan styles. | 0:43:00 | 0:43:01 | |
We've got a change from people using indigenous pottery forms, | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
pottery forms you'd find in the mainland, | 0:43:04 | 0:43:06 | |
but they're making them in Cretan shapes, | 0:43:06 | 0:43:09 | |
but they're making it out of local pottery. So they're adopting the fashions. | 0:43:09 | 0:43:13 | |
The ceramic jug is thought to be | 0:43:15 | 0:43:17 | |
an exact copy of a bronze metal amphora. | 0:43:17 | 0:43:20 | |
The detail in the spout and the line around the neck | 0:43:20 | 0:43:24 | |
are seen on metal versions of the jug found in Crete | 0:43:24 | 0:43:27 | |
that would have been much more expensive to produce. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:30 | |
The people of Pavlopetri are copying the lifestyles | 0:43:30 | 0:43:33 | |
of the rich and famous in some ways. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:35 | |
It's a bit like buying a cheap copy | 0:43:35 | 0:43:37 | |
of a rich fashion label or something like that. | 0:43:37 | 0:43:40 | |
It's buying into the lifestyles of the rich and famous. | 0:43:40 | 0:43:43 | |
Why not have a Minoan jug in your home as well? | 0:43:43 | 0:43:45 | |
You can get it at a knock-down price in ceramic, | 0:43:45 | 0:43:48 | |
and you're getting some of that cache of having, you know, | 0:43:48 | 0:43:51 | |
the latest fashions in your house. | 0:43:51 | 0:43:53 | |
Cultural insights aren't just coming from artefacts. | 0:44:02 | 0:44:06 | |
Clues to the inhabitants' belief systems and even social structure | 0:44:07 | 0:44:12 | |
can be seen in the way the people of Pavlopetri took care of their dead. | 0:44:12 | 0:44:16 | |
Some of these tombs date to nearly 5000 years ago. | 0:44:18 | 0:44:21 | |
This is probably one of the only indications | 0:44:22 | 0:44:26 | |
that there's an archaeological site here from the shore. | 0:44:26 | 0:44:29 | |
We've got about 60 rock-cut tombs, just following a line of bedrock | 0:44:31 | 0:44:35 | |
which would have overlooked the city. | 0:44:35 | 0:44:38 | |
For the first time, really, in the Bronze Age, | 0:44:42 | 0:44:44 | |
we're beginning to see attitudes towards death | 0:44:44 | 0:44:47 | |
and disposing of the dead in some ways, | 0:44:47 | 0:44:49 | |
or sending them on to the next life. | 0:44:49 | 0:44:51 | |
We're beginning to see attitudes towards the dead | 0:44:51 | 0:44:53 | |
which we recognise in our own society. | 0:44:53 | 0:44:55 | |
The inhabitants appear to have had a close relationship | 0:44:57 | 0:45:01 | |
and respect for their dead. | 0:45:01 | 0:45:03 | |
But not everyone was entombed in such grand structures. | 0:45:03 | 0:45:07 | |
This is what's called a cyst grave. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:12 | |
What you have is four slabs | 0:45:12 | 0:45:14 | |
placed in to create a small compartment, | 0:45:14 | 0:45:19 | |
almost like a coffin, almost like the kind of thing | 0:45:19 | 0:45:21 | |
we would imagine a grave to be today. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
But what's interesting is how small it is. | 0:45:24 | 0:45:28 | |
And we think that these graves were used for the burials of children. | 0:45:28 | 0:45:33 | |
There are over 40 cyst graves across the city, | 0:45:38 | 0:45:41 | |
all located inside buildings. | 0:45:41 | 0:45:44 | |
Each would have had a stone slab to seal the tomb. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:51 | |
Jon has a theory why they buried their children in their homes. | 0:45:54 | 0:45:58 | |
What people were doing was keeping the children that had died | 0:46:04 | 0:46:09 | |
close to them after death, | 0:46:09 | 0:46:12 | |
in the sort of house space, | 0:46:12 | 0:46:15 | |
perhaps to encourage fertility in the household | 0:46:15 | 0:46:18 | |
or to make sure there would be more children along the way. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:22 | |
As well as connections with the afterlife, | 0:46:27 | 0:46:31 | |
the team is finding that social standing is also reflected in death. | 0:46:31 | 0:46:35 | |
Cut into the ridge of rock running along the eastern edge of the city | 0:46:39 | 0:46:43 | |
are two huge rock-cut chamber tombs. | 0:46:43 | 0:46:46 | |
This is the entrance passage into a central chamber. | 0:46:49 | 0:46:54 | |
I suspect this is one of the most pre-eminent graves | 0:46:56 | 0:47:00 | |
in the whole of the site. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:02 | |
It was probably only for one or two very important people. | 0:47:03 | 0:47:08 | |
This would have been entirely carved out of rock | 0:47:13 | 0:47:17 | |
and this is where people would have come and laid out their dead. | 0:47:17 | 0:47:21 | |
These tombs date to the Mycenaean era | 0:47:25 | 0:47:28 | |
and are like today's large family crypts. | 0:47:28 | 0:47:31 | |
They could be re-opened to add additional bodies | 0:47:32 | 0:47:36 | |
or conduct rituals. | 0:47:36 | 0:47:37 | |
These impressive structures | 0:47:38 | 0:47:40 | |
were for the elite leaders or ruling families of Pavlopetri, | 0:47:40 | 0:47:44 | |
boasting the best resting place overlooking the city. | 0:47:44 | 0:47:48 | |
It appears the city's inhabitants | 0:47:55 | 0:47:57 | |
had a complex and multi-layered social hierarchy. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:01 | |
We've got evidence that people are beginning to have defined roles | 0:48:03 | 0:48:06 | |
within that society, even professions. | 0:48:06 | 0:48:08 | |
They'd have been craftsmen or merchants or even soldiers. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:13 | |
And you're beginning to see some level of status in society | 0:48:13 | 0:48:16 | |
and it's interesting that that's now being reflected in the burials, | 0:48:16 | 0:48:20 | |
where we're now beginning to see tombs reflecting probably some level of status. | 0:48:20 | 0:48:25 | |
The people of Pavlopetri lived in a vibrant city, | 0:48:28 | 0:48:32 | |
with a structured society, and organised trade. | 0:48:32 | 0:48:36 | |
So how did a culture so advanced disappear under the waves? | 0:48:37 | 0:48:41 | |
Its fate has been puzzling oceanographer Nic Flemming | 0:48:45 | 0:48:49 | |
ever since he first discovered the site over 40 years ago. | 0:48:49 | 0:48:52 | |
When you find an underwater city, | 0:48:53 | 0:48:55 | |
the problem always is, did the land go down or did the sea come up? | 0:48:55 | 0:49:00 | |
Here at Pavlopetri, there's a lot of explaining to do. | 0:49:00 | 0:49:04 | |
Pavlopetri stood at a time when global sea level was on the rise, | 0:49:06 | 0:49:10 | |
still fed by water melting from the last great Ice Age. | 0:49:10 | 0:49:15 | |
But Nic believes that wouldn't have been enough to drown the city. | 0:49:16 | 0:49:20 | |
Greece is one of the most geologically active places in the world. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:27 | |
Throughout history, there are records of huge earthquakes, | 0:49:27 | 0:49:32 | |
giant tsunamis, | 0:49:32 | 0:49:34 | |
and vast volcanic eruptions. | 0:49:34 | 0:49:36 | |
Could it be that Pavlopetri was sent to its watery grave | 0:49:39 | 0:49:43 | |
in one single cataclysmic earthquake? | 0:49:43 | 0:49:46 | |
Clues to the answer lie in a set of strange underwater rock formations | 0:49:52 | 0:49:57 | |
which are actually ancient fossilised shorelines. | 0:49:57 | 0:50:01 | |
You find strips of what look like concrete, | 0:50:03 | 0:50:07 | |
laid almost like a paving strip | 0:50:07 | 0:50:09 | |
along the beach, which is actually a natural cement, | 0:50:09 | 0:50:13 | |
formed by the action of sunlight on the sand with the salt water. | 0:50:13 | 0:50:17 | |
And that can give you exactly where the sea level was at past dates. | 0:50:17 | 0:50:21 | |
These ancient shorelines | 0:50:23 | 0:50:25 | |
are what Jon originally saw from the helicopter. | 0:50:25 | 0:50:28 | |
They are made up of something called beach rock | 0:50:28 | 0:50:31 | |
and show up as dark strips lying parallel to the sandy shore. | 0:50:31 | 0:50:35 | |
Beach rock only forms at the water's edge, | 0:50:40 | 0:50:43 | |
so these parallel strips show where the beach would have been | 0:50:43 | 0:50:46 | |
at different times in history. | 0:50:46 | 0:50:48 | |
Jon wants to get a sample from the individual lines of beach rock | 0:50:53 | 0:50:59 | |
to track the times of the changing shoreline. | 0:50:59 | 0:51:01 | |
Hopefully we'll get a rough date of the formation of this coastline, | 0:51:05 | 0:51:09 | |
this old shoreline, and that might tell us something | 0:51:09 | 0:51:13 | |
about when Pavlopetri was submerged. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
The idea of a massive subsidence and a sort of huge tidal wave | 0:51:20 | 0:51:24 | |
and molten lava and ash coming down out of the sky is very attractive, | 0:51:24 | 0:51:28 | |
and of course it does sometimes happen, | 0:51:28 | 0:51:31 | |
but unfortunately for the Hollywood movie people, | 0:51:31 | 0:51:34 | |
it doesn't seem to have happened here. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:37 | |
The presence of successive lines of beach rock | 0:51:40 | 0:51:43 | |
indicates there was more than one seismic event. | 0:51:43 | 0:51:47 | |
From the radiocarbon dating process, | 0:51:47 | 0:51:50 | |
it appears Pavlopetri sunk in at least three earthquake events, | 0:51:50 | 0:51:55 | |
the first coming soon after 1000 BC. | 0:51:55 | 0:51:58 | |
Each time the land dropped, more of the remaining buildings | 0:51:59 | 0:52:03 | |
were claimed by the sea. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:05 | |
We've got a grand city which has seen better days, | 0:52:06 | 0:52:09 | |
but slowly as the edge of the town became waterlogged, | 0:52:09 | 0:52:13 | |
winter storm takes away some of the key buildings, | 0:52:13 | 0:52:16 | |
and then finally you're left with, you know, just a few houses | 0:52:16 | 0:52:19 | |
sticking out of the water and it's gone, and I find that a... | 0:52:19 | 0:52:24 | |
an attractive, rather sad image, but it's just as human | 0:52:24 | 0:52:28 | |
and just as moving as blowing the whole thing up in one night. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:31 | |
With only a few days left and all testing complete, | 0:52:40 | 0:52:43 | |
the mapping team are finally ready to deploy their robotic surveying torpedo. | 0:52:43 | 0:52:48 | |
Just like the push-along rig, | 0:52:52 | 0:52:54 | |
bright sunlight interferes with the cameras, | 0:52:54 | 0:52:57 | |
so they have to run the robot at night. | 0:52:57 | 0:53:00 | |
I think this is the first time this has been done | 0:53:00 | 0:53:03 | |
in a submerged archaeological site like this. | 0:53:03 | 0:53:06 | |
Just seeing it go in the water was fantastic. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:09 | |
The plan is to survey the entire site in just a couple of nights, | 0:53:10 | 0:53:15 | |
a job that would normally take months. | 0:53:15 | 0:53:17 | |
The stakes are high. | 0:53:18 | 0:53:20 | |
It's always a bit disconcerting, I guess, to put a machine | 0:53:20 | 0:53:25 | |
that costs several hundred thousands of dollars into the ocean | 0:53:25 | 0:53:29 | |
without a way of knowing what it's going to do exactly. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:32 | |
Following a programmed route, | 0:53:34 | 0:53:36 | |
the torpedo moves across the site at around two nautical miles an hour, | 0:53:36 | 0:53:41 | |
with its twin cameras photographing the sea floor three times a second. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:46 | |
After just a few nights' work, | 0:53:47 | 0:53:50 | |
the team have got some impressive results. | 0:53:50 | 0:53:52 | |
They've succeeded in completing a stone by stone photo map of the entire city. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:57 | |
This will fundamentally change the way we do underwater archaeology. | 0:54:00 | 0:54:04 | |
This is... You can't get any better than this | 0:54:04 | 0:54:07 | |
in terms of underwater survey. | 0:54:07 | 0:54:09 | |
The other thing about doing this is it allows you to create views, | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
which are actually impossible otherwise. | 0:54:12 | 0:54:14 | |
If we had this in reality, we'd be way out of the water, | 0:54:14 | 0:54:17 | |
we'd be right above the sea. | 0:54:17 | 0:54:19 | |
So it allows us to examine the city in different ways. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:23 | |
Using the millimetre-accurate, 3D photo map of the whole city, | 0:54:23 | 0:54:28 | |
the visual effects team can now finish building Pavlopetri, | 0:54:28 | 0:54:32 | |
and digitally raise it from the seafloor. | 0:54:32 | 0:54:34 | |
But to apply the final touches, | 0:54:45 | 0:54:47 | |
Simon has one last job to complete down on the beach. | 0:54:47 | 0:54:51 | |
By capturing the way the sunlight falls on the mirrored ball, | 0:54:53 | 0:54:58 | |
Simon can reproduce exactly how the sun | 0:54:58 | 0:55:01 | |
would have bathed the city itself thousands of years ago. | 0:55:01 | 0:55:04 | |
We want to be able to get a map of this light | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
to add to our computer model to give us a very realistic interpretation | 0:55:09 | 0:55:13 | |
of what the city would have once looked like. | 0:55:13 | 0:55:16 | |
We've had the very detailed survey, | 0:55:18 | 0:55:20 | |
but then we've enhanced that with the visual effects team | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
to reconstruct, bring the city back to life. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:25 | |
By digitally recreating the city stone by stone, | 0:55:30 | 0:55:33 | |
we can at last glimpse Pavlopetri through the eyes of its inhabitants. | 0:55:33 | 0:55:39 | |
I'm blown away by the fact that they can actually reconstruct | 0:55:46 | 0:55:49 | |
whole buildings from just the really basic robotic models we generated. | 0:55:49 | 0:55:54 | |
It takes the city from a pile of artefacts and stones | 0:55:54 | 0:55:57 | |
and really turns it into something that the public can visualise. | 0:55:57 | 0:56:02 | |
Some parts of the city are missing from the seafloor, | 0:56:04 | 0:56:07 | |
washed away by wave action. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:10 | |
But guided by the spread of pottery sherds and isolated foundation stones, | 0:56:10 | 0:56:15 | |
plus clues from other Bronze Age town plans, | 0:56:15 | 0:56:18 | |
Jon believes this is what the complete city might have looked like. | 0:56:18 | 0:56:22 | |
Bringing the city back to life creates a closer connection with the site, | 0:56:24 | 0:56:28 | |
and perhaps a closer connection with the people who lived there. | 0:56:28 | 0:56:31 | |
Based on the age of artefacts found across the site, | 0:56:34 | 0:56:37 | |
this is an impression of Pavlopetri at its peak, around 1600BC. | 0:56:37 | 0:56:43 | |
It was a city with a planned layout. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:48 | |
People lived alongside each other, in neighbourhoods. | 0:56:50 | 0:56:53 | |
They had large houses with courtyards, upstairs bedrooms, | 0:56:55 | 0:57:00 | |
and views of the sea. | 0:57:00 | 0:57:02 | |
So we get people such as merchants. We get craftsmen. | 0:57:04 | 0:57:08 | |
Scribes, administrators. | 0:57:08 | 0:57:10 | |
Probably even prostitutes. We get slaves. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:13 | |
We get a wide range of people. | 0:57:13 | 0:57:15 | |
The kind of thing we would expect in a busy, mixed port town. | 0:57:15 | 0:57:19 | |
Starting as a small, presumably fishing village | 0:57:22 | 0:57:27 | |
and developing into a very busy port with connections | 0:57:27 | 0:57:30 | |
throughout the Aegean Sea initially, then with Crete, | 0:57:30 | 0:57:32 | |
and then with the Eastern Mediterranean. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:35 | |
And the kind of complexity and development | 0:57:35 | 0:57:37 | |
that would have had for the city itself, | 0:57:37 | 0:57:39 | |
for me, that's the big story of Pavlopetri. | 0:57:39 | 0:57:42 | |
Pavlopetri was an active harbour town. | 0:57:45 | 0:57:48 | |
It stood as a gateway to the mainland, | 0:57:49 | 0:57:51 | |
not just where imports and exports changed hands... | 0:57:51 | 0:57:56 | |
..but a meeting of minds and an exchange of ideas. | 0:57:57 | 0:58:01 | |
It's making us realise that the people | 0:58:02 | 0:58:05 | |
were very much like you and I. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:07 | |
They were living lives which are not far distant from the lives we live today. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:11 | |
We're actually seeing the dawning of the West, in some way. | 0:58:12 | 0:58:16 | |
We can begin to trace that back to sites like Pavlopetri. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:19 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:33 | 0:58:36 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:58:36 | 0:58:39 |