0:00:03 > 0:00:05Athens, Greece.
0:00:05 > 0:00:09It was here close on 2,500 years ago
0:00:09 > 0:00:12that a tale was composed about an island civilisation
0:00:12 > 0:00:14of unparalleled wealth and power
0:00:14 > 0:00:18which was swallowed up by the sea.
0:00:18 > 0:00:21The author was no less than Plato,
0:00:21 > 0:00:25the father of Western philosophy.
0:00:25 > 0:00:29And his story became the legend of Atlantis.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35The idea of Atlantis has always fascinated me.
0:00:35 > 0:00:37Now, you might think that, as a historian,
0:00:37 > 0:00:39I'd pour scorn on the legend,
0:00:39 > 0:00:42just condemn it as another fairy-tale.
0:00:43 > 0:00:49Atlantis has generated feverish speculation as to whether this fabled island ever existed.
0:00:49 > 0:00:56And it's spawned scores of crackpot theories about where it might be found.
0:00:58 > 0:01:05But I'm certain that beneath the rubble of fantasy, are the foundations of a real story.
0:01:05 > 0:01:08A thousand years before Plato lived,
0:01:08 > 0:01:11a truly amazing civilisation thrived here
0:01:11 > 0:01:14in the eastern Mediterranean.
0:01:14 > 0:01:17But that civilisation suffered a terrible catastrophe.
0:01:24 > 0:01:28Brand new scientific evidence shows us, that disaster
0:01:28 > 0:01:32was at least twice as large as previously thought.
0:01:33 > 0:01:39So could that tragedy be the basis for Plato's Atlantis myth?
0:01:59 > 0:02:02When you say the name Atlantis, what often springs to mind
0:02:02 > 0:02:07is a lost underwater city or a mythical utopia.
0:02:07 > 0:02:10But actually Plato's Atlantis is neither of those things.
0:02:10 > 0:02:17His was a maritime trading empire, a sort of super state that enjoyed huge success
0:02:17 > 0:02:20but then became aggressive and overbearing,
0:02:20 > 0:02:23and so was punished for its arrogance by the gods.
0:02:23 > 0:02:31Now, because that idea is eternally fascinating to us, the notion that pride always comes before a fall,
0:02:31 > 0:02:38from the moment that the Atlantis myth was set down here in Athens, it has never once left the human radar.
0:02:41 > 0:02:46"Listen, then, to a tale which is though strange, but wholly true,
0:02:46 > 0:02:50"for these histories tell of a mighty power.
0:02:50 > 0:02:52"Atlantis.
0:02:52 > 0:02:56"It had circular belts of sea and land enclosing one another alternately.
0:02:56 > 0:03:01"In the sacred precincts of Poseidon, there were bulls roaming at large.
0:03:01 > 0:03:06"The seaway and harbour were filled with ships and merchants coming from all quarters.
0:03:06 > 0:03:10"They were of all men most renowned.
0:03:10 > 0:03:16"And the wealth they possessed was so immense that the like had never been seen before.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19"But at length they lost their comeliness.
0:03:19 > 0:03:25"And there occurred portentous earthquakes and floods, and one grievous day and night befell them.
0:03:27 > 0:03:33"And the island of Atlantis was swallowed up by the sea, and vanished."
0:03:44 > 0:03:49Atlantis is an allegory, a morality tale.
0:03:49 > 0:03:53Plato wrote it as a warning to his fellow Athenians
0:03:53 > 0:03:58that wealth and power lead to destruction if they are not grounded in virtue.
0:04:03 > 0:04:08But Plato's description of Atlantis is so rich in specific detail that I think he picked up on stories
0:04:08 > 0:04:16he'd heard, and transmitted a fantastical version of something that once existed.
0:04:19 > 0:04:23But he is in the streets, he's chatting away, he's picking up ideas.
0:04:23 > 0:04:26'Angie Hobbs is an expert on Plato.
0:04:26 > 0:04:28'In return for a historical tour of his world,
0:04:28 > 0:04:34'I want to find out what she thinks about the roots of the story.'
0:04:34 > 0:04:37I've got a little treat for you.
0:04:37 > 0:04:39- What are we about to see? - We are about to see...
0:04:39 > 0:04:46I've been given special access to these new city centre excavations, a time capsule from golden-age Athens.
0:04:46 > 0:04:52We're walking where Plato, Aristotle, all my heroes would have walked and
0:04:52 > 0:04:58chatted and argued and debated, and this is where it all began.
0:04:58 > 0:05:00It's actually quite moving.
0:05:00 > 0:05:03It is, it is. A bit of golden-age stone there.
0:05:03 > 0:05:08I mean, that's what I love about Plato, the idea that he's out here, he's in the city,
0:05:08 > 0:05:15he's using all the tricks he can, in a way, to try to encourage people to listen to his philosophy
0:05:15 > 0:05:18and to be moved by it and to learn from it.
0:05:18 > 0:05:23Yes, and, of course, we've got an age without media to promote your message for you.
0:05:23 > 0:05:25You have to do everything yourself.
0:05:25 > 0:05:31But he never loses sight of his Socratic inheritance of wanting to get out there
0:05:31 > 0:05:34and really make individuals', people's lives better.
0:05:34 > 0:05:37To save their lives, save their souls, as he puts it.
0:05:37 > 0:05:40It could be, then, that this is just a moral fable,
0:05:40 > 0:05:44that the Atlantis story is just one grand political allegory?
0:05:44 > 0:05:49Well, it's a possibility. He's certainly got the vivid imagination to be able to have made it up.
0:05:49 > 0:05:51He's not a historian, that's not his intention.
0:05:51 > 0:05:55His intention is to use history, to use mythology
0:05:55 > 0:05:58to make his own philosophical points.
0:05:58 > 0:06:02How possible do you think it is that the Atlantis myth
0:06:02 > 0:06:06has some kind of a root in the prehistoric past?
0:06:06 > 0:06:12I think it's very likely that Plato has heard some stories of past civilisations
0:06:12 > 0:06:18which have come crashing down, that he's got half-remembered bits of oral history which he weaves in.
0:06:18 > 0:06:23He's concocting this fantastical brew here but he's using bits of
0:06:23 > 0:06:24mythology, bits of history,
0:06:24 > 0:06:27anything he wants, as part of the mix.
0:06:27 > 0:06:32So I think there could be some factual historical basis for Plato's legend,
0:06:32 > 0:06:36even though that's not what Plato himself is particularly interested in.
0:06:40 > 0:06:46Whatever Plato's inspiration, Atlantis has captured our imagination ever since.
0:06:46 > 0:06:50It's led to scores of expeditions and thousands of books.
0:06:50 > 0:06:55More often than not, these quests tell us more about the power of human imagination
0:06:55 > 0:06:57than about Atlantis itself.
0:07:00 > 0:07:04Some of the most bizarre Atlantis theories are based on the idea
0:07:04 > 0:07:09that human civilisation has extraterrestrial origins.
0:07:09 > 0:07:16I tried to prove that this planet has been visited by beings from outer space several times in antiquity.
0:07:16 > 0:07:22They made with our forefathers, a kind of artificial mutation.
0:07:22 > 0:07:23And finally,
0:07:23 > 0:07:29these wizards from outer space have gone into archaeological artefacts.
0:07:30 > 0:07:34However incredible Erich Von Daniken's theory, he sold millions of books
0:07:34 > 0:07:39and persuaded many that Atlantis was an extraterrestrial colony.
0:07:41 > 0:07:45But Atlantis has also been used for more sinister purposes.
0:07:48 > 0:07:54Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler was convinced that the so-called Aryan master race
0:07:54 > 0:07:56was descended from the fabled Atlanteans,
0:07:56 > 0:08:02and that the missing link could be found in one of the most unlikely places.
0:08:02 > 0:08:06CYMBAL CRASHES, PIPES DRONE
0:08:06 > 0:08:08Tibet.
0:08:12 > 0:08:16During the Victorian age of exploration, the obsession with Atlantis even extended
0:08:16 > 0:08:18to British prime ministers.
0:08:18 > 0:08:23William Gladstone wrote a letter to an American congressman called Ignatius Donnelly,
0:08:23 > 0:08:28who had written a book about the lost world, locating it somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean.
0:08:29 > 0:08:34Gladstone proposed a government-sponsored expedition to search for it there.
0:08:34 > 0:08:37But the Treasury rejected the proposal.
0:08:40 > 0:08:42Atlantis hunting is a fraught exercise.
0:08:42 > 0:08:47But precisely because it has generated so many wild theories,
0:08:47 > 0:08:52there's even more reason to try to sift the fact from the fiction.
0:08:58 > 0:09:04Fresh scientific evidence buttresses the idea that Plato's story was inspired by a real island
0:09:04 > 0:09:11and a real ancient civilisation, which was destroyed by a real natural disaster.
0:09:14 > 0:09:17The island I'm heading for is south-east of Athens.
0:09:17 > 0:09:20It's called Santorini, or Thera,
0:09:20 > 0:09:22as it was originally christened by the Greeks.
0:09:26 > 0:09:30The first thing that strikes you about Thera is its really odd topography.
0:09:31 > 0:09:37The land just juts straight out of the sea and then you get these small islands ringed by water,
0:09:37 > 0:09:44which are then, in turn, cradled by that massive semi-circle of land up there.
0:09:44 > 0:09:48Now just listen to what Plato has to say about his Atlantis.
0:09:51 > 0:09:58"There were circular belts of sea and land enclosing one another, some greater, some smaller."
0:09:58 > 0:10:01Now of course, that in itself doesn't prove anything.
0:10:01 > 0:10:06I mean, there could be loads of locations all round the world that match this description.
0:10:06 > 0:10:13But nonetheless, this account and that landscape are really remarkably similar.
0:10:15 > 0:10:20This dramatic landscape draws thousands of tourists every year.
0:10:20 > 0:10:22But not all of them realise that they are
0:10:22 > 0:10:27actually sailing into the remnants of an enormous volcanic crater.
0:10:32 > 0:10:36Everywhere you look on this island there is geological evidence of volcanic activity.
0:10:38 > 0:10:43A thousand years before Plato was writing, in around about 1620 BC,
0:10:43 > 0:10:50this island suffered the biggest volcanic eruption in the whole of the ancient world.
0:11:01 > 0:11:05'One of the world's leading volcanologists, Haraldur Sigurdsson,
0:11:05 > 0:11:10'recently led an expedition to the sea floor around Santorini.'
0:11:10 > 0:11:16He found surprising evidence of the true scale of the Theran eruption.
0:11:16 > 0:11:18We use two approaches.
0:11:18 > 0:11:22So basically you're firing a gun that sends a sound wave into the sea floor
0:11:22 > 0:11:24and you get data coming back
0:11:24 > 0:11:26that tells you the thickness of the layers.
0:11:26 > 0:11:31But then the other method we used was to send down a submersible,
0:11:31 > 0:11:35which is like a small car, but you drive it from the ship.
0:11:35 > 0:11:38It's got nine cameras on it all taking video,
0:11:38 > 0:11:40and you get all sorts of information.
0:11:41 > 0:11:48Haraldur's team scanned the sea floor, measuring underwater deposits produced by the volcano.
0:11:52 > 0:11:56We know that the eruption produced mostly pyroclastic flows.
0:11:56 > 0:11:58When an eruption of this type begins,
0:11:58 > 0:12:02it immediately creates a plume of ash and pumice
0:12:02 > 0:12:04that goes up into the atmosphere.
0:12:06 > 0:12:13Then, after a few hours, you have a collapse of the eruption column cascading down like avalanches.
0:12:14 > 0:12:17The pyroclastic flows begin.
0:12:20 > 0:12:23Pyroclastic flows have a very distinctive rock type
0:12:23 > 0:12:27composed of pumice and ash and big stones, all mixed together.
0:12:27 > 0:12:34If the eruption really had had a big impact, we would expect to find pyroclastic flows on the sea floor.
0:12:36 > 0:12:40What we found is that the deposit extends on the sea floor
0:12:40 > 0:12:4430 kilometres in all directions from the Santorini volcano.
0:12:44 > 0:12:46So it's very, very widespread.
0:12:48 > 0:12:54These findings show that the eruption was one of the greatest ever in the human experience.
0:12:54 > 0:12:57In the previous studies we had estimated
0:12:57 > 0:13:02that there were about 30 cubic kilometres erupted from this event, which is a very large volume.
0:13:03 > 0:13:11But with these new findings, we found that actually the deposit is about 60 cubic kilometres or maybe even more.
0:13:13 > 0:13:18Let's compare it to some other eruptions and one convenient one is the very famous eruption of Vesuvius
0:13:18 > 0:13:22in 79AD, in Italy, which destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum.
0:13:28 > 0:13:33We know that the Vesuvius eruption was about six kilometres, only,
0:13:33 > 0:13:35compared to 60 here.
0:13:35 > 0:13:39Another very famous eruption is the eruption of Mount St Helens
0:13:39 > 0:13:40in the United States, in 1980.
0:13:44 > 0:13:46It is like smoke coming out of a chimney.
0:13:48 > 0:13:52But there was only half a cubic kilometre, compared to 60 here.
0:13:53 > 0:13:57So this is a very, very special event.
0:13:59 > 0:14:03Do you think there's a possibility that in Plato's Atlantis myth
0:14:03 > 0:14:07what he's also remembering is this event here?
0:14:07 > 0:14:14Personally I have no doubt that the Atlantis myth was triggered by the eruption of Santorini.
0:14:14 > 0:14:19We're getting so much geological evidence that supports a major natural catastrophe in this area
0:14:19 > 0:14:23that I think we have to look at it very carefully as the nucleus for this myth.
0:14:28 > 0:14:31Plato's Atlantis was an island.
0:14:31 > 0:14:33It was destroyed by a disaster
0:14:33 > 0:14:37and it was home to an advanced civilisation.
0:14:37 > 0:14:41Thera matches all three of these characteristics.
0:14:41 > 0:14:45Firstly, its topography is remarkably similar to Plato's Atlantis.
0:14:45 > 0:14:50Secondly, it was the scene of a natural disaster of cataclysmic proportions.
0:14:50 > 0:14:56And crucially, it was also home to an amazing civilisation.
0:15:00 > 0:15:05The eruption rendered the island uninhabitable for centuries
0:15:05 > 0:15:08but as the landscape came back to life, people returned.
0:15:11 > 0:15:17Then in 1967, archaeologists made an incredible discovery.
0:15:20 > 0:15:26Beneath more than 100 feet of metres of pumice and ash was a lost world,
0:15:26 > 0:15:28entombed by the eruption.
0:15:28 > 0:15:32It was heralded as the Pompeii of the Aegean.
0:15:36 > 0:15:40But to my mind, even that phrase doesn't do this site justice.
0:15:40 > 0:15:45So far archaeologists have excavated 10,000 square metres of the town.
0:15:45 > 0:15:49But they actually estimate that it is 30 times bigger than that.
0:15:49 > 0:15:55This is a buried city that is slowly being brought back to life.
0:16:19 > 0:16:22In my opinion, Theran Bronze Age society is one of the most
0:16:22 > 0:16:26beguiling of all civilisations that ever walked the earth.
0:16:26 > 0:16:29And you've got to remember that we're talking about a people
0:16:29 > 0:16:34who are living and working 3,500 years ago.
0:16:35 > 0:16:36Kali me ra!
0:16:37 > 0:16:44'The Greek authorities are reluctant to allow outsiders to film the ongoing restoration process.'
0:16:44 > 0:16:47- Welcome.- Thank you very much.
0:16:50 > 0:16:55'But chief archaeologist Christos Doumas has granted us special permission to go behind the scenes.'
0:17:04 > 0:17:07This treasure trove of artefacts provides a glimpse
0:17:07 > 0:17:11of the sophisticated world that the Therans once inhabited.
0:17:12 > 0:17:18We have the evidence that they were very sophisticated in inventing things...
0:17:18 > 0:17:25Especially with pottery, they managed to solve a lot of very big problems.
0:17:25 > 0:17:29They managed to produce very sophisticated
0:17:29 > 0:17:31shapes and forms
0:17:31 > 0:17:34and in very high quality.
0:17:35 > 0:17:39These are very rare and unique.
0:17:43 > 0:17:48The Akrotiri storage rooms also house a series of spectacular wall paintings.
0:17:48 > 0:17:52As each one is painstakingly pieced together,
0:17:52 > 0:17:57it becomes increasingly clear just how advanced this society was.
0:18:00 > 0:18:04The wall paintings that are being discovered at Thera are in a league of their own.
0:18:07 > 0:18:14They're very vivacious, they're very unsuppressed, they're very individualistic.
0:18:19 > 0:18:21Compare that with the other art of the period,
0:18:21 > 0:18:24the beautiful art of Egypt, for example,
0:18:24 > 0:18:26and there you're looking at something
0:18:26 > 0:18:28which is much more monumental,
0:18:28 > 0:18:31much more formulaic, much more controlled.
0:18:33 > 0:18:38Whereas the Theran wall paintings have their own life and their own story.
0:18:47 > 0:18:51One of the things you notice immediately about the wall paintings
0:18:51 > 0:18:55is that women are conspicuous not by their absence but by their presence.
0:18:55 > 0:19:00In almost all of the figurative pictures you will find a woman there.
0:19:00 > 0:19:04What is really interesting is they are clearly of high status.
0:19:04 > 0:19:07Look at this beautiful girl.
0:19:07 > 0:19:10She's got exquisite gold hoop earrings
0:19:10 > 0:19:14and her bodice has clearly been coloured with that expensive saffron dye.
0:19:14 > 0:19:21She's actually offering saffron to this kind of superwoman who I suspect is some kind of divinity
0:19:21 > 0:19:28because she has got behind her a griffin, which was usually a sign of a goddess or a spirit.
0:19:30 > 0:19:34The contrast between these women from the Bronze Age
0:19:34 > 0:19:37and the women of Plato's day in 5th-century Athens
0:19:37 > 0:19:39could not be starker.
0:19:39 > 0:19:43In Athens, women were second-class citizens.
0:19:43 > 0:19:46They were often not allowed out during daylight,
0:19:46 > 0:19:52they only were given half rations and they were encouraged not to speak out in public.
0:19:52 > 0:19:56Whereas these girls from 1,000 earlier in the Bronze Age, they have respect,
0:19:56 > 0:20:02they have clout, and they clearly have standing in society.
0:20:06 > 0:20:12So for me, Theran society is in more ways than one, a lost world.
0:20:12 > 0:20:17The Therans were light years ahead of many other cultures of the time.
0:20:17 > 0:20:21They used writing, they had a remarkably egalitarian society
0:20:21 > 0:20:23and they had a well organised economy.
0:20:23 > 0:20:28But there is one facet of this culture which ensured that Thera could never be forgotten
0:20:28 > 0:20:32and which provides a direct parallel with Atlantis.
0:20:32 > 0:20:35Thera was the central lynchpin in a trading network
0:20:35 > 0:20:38that stretched between three continents...
0:20:38 > 0:20:42Europe, Africa and Asia.
0:20:48 > 0:20:51This is where you get really close to the secret behind Thera's success.
0:20:51 > 0:20:56You cannot understand the Therans unless you understand their relationship to the sea.
0:20:56 > 0:21:01Back in the Bronze Age, it was the oceans that were the highways of the known world.
0:21:01 > 0:21:04And because Thera is so strategically placed,
0:21:04 > 0:21:10the people who lived here became masters of those networks of trade and communication.
0:21:13 > 0:21:15Plato describes Atlantis as a place where,
0:21:15 > 0:21:21"The harbour was filled with ships and merchants coming from all quarters."
0:21:21 > 0:21:263,500 years ago, Thera would have mirrored that description.
0:21:26 > 0:21:30It was an international trading hub with as many as a dozen languages
0:21:30 > 0:21:33ranging from Minoan, and Hittite to Egyptian, and Canaanite
0:21:33 > 0:21:36drifting out across the water between the boats.
0:21:40 > 0:21:44A record of this cosmopolitan world was captured on the most spectacular
0:21:44 > 0:21:48Theran wall painting of all, the fleet fresco.
0:21:50 > 0:21:55It's thanks to this painting we have a lot of information
0:21:55 > 0:21:58about sailing, shipping and trade.
0:22:03 > 0:22:11It shows real ships and it is for the first time that we have depictions of ships of that period in that scale.
0:22:11 > 0:22:16So does that mean that this is a new kind of ship that we're looking at here?
0:22:16 > 0:22:22Yes, we have the earliest representations of sailing ships.
0:22:22 > 0:22:26And presumably with this kind of inventiveness,
0:22:26 > 0:22:30the Therans are really succeeding when they go onto the oceans.
0:22:30 > 0:22:36They're actually managing to navigate routes that would have been impossible before.
0:22:36 > 0:22:38Yes, exactly.
0:22:46 > 0:22:50That's fascinating, isn't it? Because it could tell you either
0:22:50 > 0:22:53that the Therans are managing to get to all these places,
0:22:53 > 0:22:58or that you have traders coming into the Theran ports bringing their influences...
0:22:58 > 0:23:03Yes. In many wall paintings we have themes from exotic lands...
0:23:03 > 0:23:05antelopes, for example.
0:23:07 > 0:23:11Because these are depicted in a very naturalistic way,
0:23:11 > 0:23:15we believe that the artist had seen them real.
0:23:19 > 0:23:23Like the Atlanteans, the Therans were masters of the sea.
0:23:23 > 0:23:27And also like the Atlanteans, they harnessed the landscape
0:23:27 > 0:23:32to create an architectural masterpiece in town planning.
0:23:36 > 0:23:40Because Plato was writing about an extraordinary place,
0:23:40 > 0:23:46you'd expect him to bang on about the glories of the architecture in his Atlantis,
0:23:46 > 0:23:48make it a larger-than-life city...
0:23:48 > 0:23:53And so it's always seemed pointless to match lock stock and barrel
0:23:53 > 0:23:56all the details in here with one real location.
0:23:56 > 0:24:01But coming here to Thera, two sentences have leapt out at me.
0:24:01 > 0:24:05This is Plato talking about the masonry of the place,
0:24:05 > 0:24:09"And of the buildings, some they framed in one simple colour,
0:24:09 > 0:24:14"in others they wove a pattern of many colours by a blending the stones for the sake of the ornament.
0:24:14 > 0:24:20"Some of it being white, some black and some red."
0:24:20 > 0:24:26Now just look at the local stone that they still use here at the site of Akrotiri.
0:24:29 > 0:24:34In Atlantis, red, black and white masonry was used to build the city.
0:24:34 > 0:24:39Here in Akrotiri, we find exactly the same.
0:24:39 > 0:24:45These buildings are so well preserved because they were buried under a deluge of volcanic ash
0:24:45 > 0:24:47up to 60 feet thick.
0:24:47 > 0:24:52Even so, it's been difficult to imagine what this place must have looked like in its former glory...
0:24:52 > 0:24:54until now.
0:24:54 > 0:24:57How many years have you been involved in Akrotiri?
0:24:57 > 0:24:59Quite a few. 30 years at least.
0:24:59 > 0:25:05Architect Clairy Palyvou has come up with a vision of Akrotiri in it's hey day, before the eruption,
0:25:05 > 0:25:08when the buildings were intact.
0:25:08 > 0:25:10Look at that!
0:25:10 > 0:25:13The first impression is really strong one.
0:25:14 > 0:25:17This is not any simple architecture
0:25:17 > 0:25:23that one would have made the mistake of imagining for a prehistoric time.
0:25:23 > 0:25:26It is a very sophisticated architecture,
0:25:26 > 0:25:33not just about meeting everyday needs or physical requirements like shelter or protection.
0:25:33 > 0:25:34It's much more.
0:25:36 > 0:25:39So you are not just looking at them as great achievers in technology
0:25:39 > 0:25:43but you're actually walking into their lives and how they ran their world?
0:25:43 > 0:25:48Yes, precisely. There are so many things that one can stop and admire
0:25:48 > 0:25:52and so many things that are there for the first time in the world.
0:25:52 > 0:26:00These people are building two, three-storey buildings on an earthquake sensitive region.
0:26:01 > 0:26:06They are also building in a style of architecture that involves a lot of openings.
0:26:08 > 0:26:11We take windows as granted nowadays,
0:26:11 > 0:26:15but back then that was something very innovative.
0:26:16 > 0:26:19That's fascinating because it's a very modern concept.
0:26:19 > 0:26:24When we employ architects now we always go on about the light, or give me a lot of light.
0:26:24 > 0:26:27- You're saying this is what was happening in the Bronze Age.- Yes.
0:26:29 > 0:26:33This is the architecture of an affluent society.
0:26:37 > 0:26:42This prosperity is shared by a large number of the members of the community.
0:26:42 > 0:26:44That is what makes the difference.
0:26:44 > 0:26:47It's not something that's kept only for the elite.
0:26:55 > 0:27:00The Therans lived in a seismic landscape, there was salt water as far as the eye could see,
0:27:00 > 0:27:04and yet they exploited the natural world around them
0:27:04 > 0:27:08to pioneer a completely new kind of civilisation.
0:27:09 > 0:27:14Just like the Atlanteans, the Therans were a technologically advanced people.
0:27:14 > 0:27:17So accomplished, that throughout the Bronze Age world,
0:27:17 > 0:27:21Theran wealth and sophistication would have been legendary.
0:27:21 > 0:27:24TRADITIONAL MUSIC PLAYS
0:27:34 > 0:27:38This is a feisty, advanced, strategically placed society.
0:27:38 > 0:27:43And yet, even with its amazing trading connections,
0:27:43 > 0:27:49you do ask yourself, how Thera could punch quite so far above its weight?
0:27:49 > 0:27:53Well, the answer lies 70 miles to the south across the sea
0:27:53 > 0:27:59in a place that was known in Plato's day as Megalo Nisi...
0:27:59 > 0:28:02The Big Island.
0:28:05 > 0:28:07Today we call it Crete but in the Bronze Age
0:28:07 > 0:28:11this island was the political and religious centre
0:28:11 > 0:28:13of Europe's first great civilisation.
0:28:13 > 0:28:20Thera's wealth and sophistication were tied up with the fortunes of this potent, special place.
0:28:24 > 0:28:29This was the beating heart of that culture, it's Knossos Palace.
0:28:34 > 0:28:38In its heyday, this was a vast administrative complex.
0:28:38 > 0:28:44It teemed with workshops, storage areas, and sumptuous wall paintings.
0:28:55 > 0:29:00Just like Thera, it was littered with ancient artefacts and architecture.
0:29:03 > 0:29:06These ruins had lain buried for centuries.
0:29:06 > 0:29:09They were brought blinking back into the light in 1900
0:29:09 > 0:29:13when they were excavated by British archaeologist, Arthur Evans.
0:29:15 > 0:29:19All this reminded Evans of the Greek myth of King Minos.
0:29:19 > 0:29:25Minos was the great ruler whose wife had spawned a monstrous creature,
0:29:25 > 0:29:28a son who was half man, half bull.
0:29:28 > 0:29:31So Evans matched the myth to the reality
0:29:31 > 0:29:36and convinced himself that here he had uncovered the site of the legendary labyrinth.
0:29:36 > 0:29:39Then he went a step further...
0:29:39 > 0:29:44He actually gave a brand new name to the people who lived here 3,500 years ago.
0:29:44 > 0:29:48He called them after King Minos, the Minoans.
0:29:48 > 0:29:50CROWD CHEERS
0:29:58 > 0:30:01This is the most ancient site in Crete...
0:30:01 > 0:30:07'I want to get to the heart of why Thera had such a close relationship with Crete.'
0:30:07 > 0:30:14So I've come here to meet archaeologist, Colin McDonald, a former curator of Knossos.
0:30:14 > 0:30:17I know that you've dug up some Theran pottery here on Crete.
0:30:17 > 0:30:23What do you think is going on here, why do these two islands have such a close relationship?
0:30:23 > 0:30:25Well, first of all you're quite right to say
0:30:25 > 0:30:27that it is a very close relationship.
0:30:27 > 0:30:32But, Thera I see as being a kind of neutral trading point,
0:30:32 > 0:30:35a sort of nodal point in the Aegean
0:30:35 > 0:30:38which was used by Crete
0:30:38 > 0:30:45so that many of the traded items in Thera would have found their way down to Crete.
0:30:45 > 0:30:52You see Crete did not really produce many raw materials of its own, so it had to look elsewhere.
0:30:52 > 0:30:55Perhaps this is another key to it making great strides.
0:30:55 > 0:30:59It had nothing and therefore went in search of everything.
0:31:03 > 0:31:09Crete and Thera each had their own distinct characteristics, but they shared the same dress code,
0:31:09 > 0:31:14language, religious rituals and technological advances.
0:31:18 > 0:31:23In a further link to Plato's Atlantis, they revered the same sacred animal...
0:31:25 > 0:31:26..the bull.
0:31:31 > 0:31:34This beautiful relief shows a bull in mid-charge.
0:31:34 > 0:31:37What you've got to remember about the bulls of the Bronze Age
0:31:37 > 0:31:42is that they were actually a species which is now extinct called aurochs.
0:31:42 > 0:31:45Aurochs were HUGE creatures.
0:31:45 > 0:31:50They stood two metres high at the shoulder with a horn span to match.
0:31:50 > 0:31:55And all our evidence from Minoan culture suggests that they were brought right here
0:31:55 > 0:31:58to the heart of Knossos Palace itself.
0:31:59 > 0:32:04These bulls were most notably associated with the dangerous sport of bull leaping,
0:32:04 > 0:32:09most likely an initiation rite undertaken by young men as they approached adulthood.
0:32:09 > 0:32:11BULL SNORTS
0:32:11 > 0:32:14Just imagine these creatures close on...
0:32:14 > 0:32:18the hot smell of their breath, the flashing whites of their eyes
0:32:18 > 0:32:22as they slowly lumbered up here ready to begin the ritual games,
0:32:22 > 0:32:25up into the sacred central court.
0:32:27 > 0:32:33And ranged all round here, in their fine jewellery and brightly-coloured clothes,
0:32:33 > 0:32:35the cream of Minoan society.
0:32:35 > 0:32:36CROWD CHEERS
0:32:36 > 0:32:42All protected from the sun by billowing canopies, waiting for the spectacle to start.
0:32:52 > 0:32:58Now just listen to what Plato has to say about the elite of his Atlantis society.
0:32:58 > 0:33:03"In the sacred precincts of Poseidon there were bulls at large.
0:33:03 > 0:33:08"And the princes, being alone after praying to the gods that they might capture a victim
0:33:08 > 0:33:12"well pleasing unto him, hunted after the bulls with staves and with nooses,
0:33:12 > 0:33:14"but with no weapon of iron."
0:33:18 > 0:33:23Now this suggests to me that what Plato is writing about
0:33:23 > 0:33:27is a kind of garbled memory of the real bull leaping
0:33:27 > 0:33:30that happened here on Crete and back in Thera.
0:33:41 > 0:33:45That is exactly what happens to memories down time.
0:33:45 > 0:33:52A storyteller, in this case Plato, picks up on something he's heard maybe in the backstreets of Athens
0:33:52 > 0:33:54or at the city's port,
0:33:54 > 0:33:58amazing tales of a long lost civilisation
0:33:58 > 0:34:00where men were equal to bulls,
0:34:00 > 0:34:04where palaces glittered and were then destroyed.
0:34:04 > 0:34:07And he uses those stories for his own purpose.
0:34:09 > 0:34:13It's definitely not history, but it is a very informal way
0:34:13 > 0:34:17of passing information down from one generation to another.
0:34:17 > 0:34:23It's almost history by accident, if you like, and to be honest, it's all the more valuable for that.
0:34:27 > 0:34:32But this beautiful, sophisticated society was sitting on a geological time bomb.
0:34:32 > 0:34:38And around 1620 BC, that bomb was set to explode.
0:34:43 > 0:34:46This is a good playground for a geologist.
0:34:46 > 0:34:50It's a prime spot for every geologist.
0:34:50 > 0:34:53Back on Thera, geologist Doctor Floyd McCoy
0:34:53 > 0:34:56has helped unearth a series of scientific clues
0:34:56 > 0:34:58which reveal what the Therans must have suffered
0:34:58 > 0:35:05as their island was devastated by the greatest volcanic eruption of the ancient world.
0:35:05 > 0:35:09This modern quarry is a cut through the island,
0:35:09 > 0:35:12and the cut through the island goes right down here to the Minoan level.
0:35:12 > 0:35:17Here it is, a cross section through not only a culture but an entire eruption.
0:35:17 > 0:35:23So what I'm touching now, this is earth that they'd have been farming in the Minoan period?
0:35:23 > 0:35:26This is the surface that man walked on here.
0:35:26 > 0:35:32I mean, debris is everywhere. Right there...man walked on, built on and left his debris.
0:35:32 > 0:35:36This is 3600 years ago and now look at it.
0:35:36 > 0:35:38It's 30, 40 metres underground.
0:35:39 > 0:35:44And realise this represents perhaps four days of accumulation.
0:35:44 > 0:35:48So in four days the surface of the earth here went to that level.
0:35:51 > 0:35:55So what are all these different parts? What do they tell us about how the eruption happened?
0:35:55 > 0:35:58What it's telling us is there's a thin layer here
0:35:58 > 0:36:03that comes up along here, and this is what we call the precursory eruption.
0:36:03 > 0:36:06Preceding this probably were months of earthquakes,
0:36:06 > 0:36:08lots of small earthquakes.
0:36:10 > 0:36:12New gases coming out, like sulphur.
0:36:15 > 0:36:18Springs would suddenly stop, reappear somewhere else.
0:36:18 > 0:36:19Cracks in the ground.
0:36:21 > 0:36:25They don't know why it was happening, but something dreadful was beginning.
0:36:25 > 0:36:27I think the sense was pure fear.
0:36:27 > 0:36:29PEOPLE SCREAM
0:36:29 > 0:36:34The many signs of an impending eruption culminated in one big earthquake
0:36:34 > 0:36:37measuring around seven on the Richter scale.
0:36:37 > 0:36:41It rendered the town uninhabitable.
0:36:43 > 0:36:45After the earthquake
0:36:45 > 0:36:51people started working in order to rescue things which were needed.
0:36:55 > 0:36:58We have found quite a lot of pieces of bedsteads et cetera,
0:36:58 > 0:37:02and these were trapped by the pumice.
0:37:04 > 0:37:10So I suspect that people had moved out, living in a camp,
0:37:10 > 0:37:15and they were working in the ruins
0:37:15 > 0:37:19in order to rescue things which were essential
0:37:19 > 0:37:22for their survival in the camp.
0:37:22 > 0:37:27At Pompeii it happened quickly, in a few hours, I think,
0:37:27 > 0:37:31whereas at Akrotiri they had time to prepare.
0:37:31 > 0:37:34No victims, nothing has been found within the settlement.
0:37:34 > 0:37:38So this was an organised departure.
0:37:42 > 0:37:46There was one specific pot, which was no different than the others,
0:37:46 > 0:37:52but the owner, for some reason, had wrapped it up with a piece of cloth which has survived.
0:37:52 > 0:37:56And I had sort of the vision of the person who,
0:37:56 > 0:38:00for some reason, was attached to this specific vessel
0:38:00 > 0:38:04and had tried to protect it with the hope of the return.
0:38:08 > 0:38:11Of course, they were familiar with earthquakes.
0:38:11 > 0:38:14An earthquake was not the end of the world.
0:38:14 > 0:38:16The end came after.
0:38:20 > 0:38:23The troubling earthquake was just a prelude to the main event -
0:38:23 > 0:38:29an eruption on a scale the ancient world had never experienced before.
0:38:36 > 0:38:39Nothing would survive that, including the city of Akrotiri.
0:38:46 > 0:38:48You would be buried beneath the pumice.
0:38:50 > 0:38:54If that didn't happen, a pyroclastic flow would just grind you to tiny bits.
0:38:54 > 0:38:59And if that didn't happen, then the fine ash would get into your lungs, block it up.
0:38:59 > 0:39:06That same ash, mixing with the fluids in your body, would turn to cement.
0:39:06 > 0:39:09There's no way you're going to survive this.
0:39:14 > 0:39:20Since no bodies have ever been discovered, experts are now trying to establish whether
0:39:20 > 0:39:25the islanders managed to escape or whether they're still buried beneath the ash and pumice.
0:39:27 > 0:39:34I think it is stupid to say that they evacuated the island. When?
0:39:34 > 0:39:38Since they were working until the moment of the eruption.
0:39:40 > 0:39:43And were all the ships here?
0:39:43 > 0:39:47And how many ships could accommodate thousands of people?
0:39:47 > 0:39:49So I do not believe they evacuated.
0:39:52 > 0:39:54God knows where the people have gone.
0:39:56 > 0:40:00I believe that they were camping somewhere near in the vicinity
0:40:00 > 0:40:03and they will be found there some day.
0:40:07 > 0:40:11It's a tragedy that's beyond any imagination.
0:40:17 > 0:40:20There is one thing I would love you to clear up for me, if you can.
0:40:20 > 0:40:24There's one line at the very last paragraph here.
0:40:24 > 0:40:30"The island vanished and the ocean at that spot has now become impassable and unsearchable,
0:40:30 > 0:40:36"being blocked up by the shoal mud which the island created as it settled down."
0:40:36 > 0:40:39That seems unlikely, but could something like that have happened?
0:40:39 > 0:40:43Absolutely. This is what the island created, this - pumice.
0:40:43 > 0:40:47Pumice is the only rock that floats.
0:40:47 > 0:40:50Vast amounts of this stuff... look at it here.
0:40:50 > 0:40:52This same material was on the ocean.
0:40:52 > 0:40:55It produced floating rafts, huge rafts.
0:40:58 > 0:41:04Today we can see the same phenomenon in the Pacific, where pumice is ejected from underwater volcanoes.
0:41:04 > 0:41:11On the surface of the sea, the pumice forms rafts, which sailors often find impossible to navigate.
0:41:11 > 0:41:17The rafts from the Theran eruption would have been a full three feet thick.
0:41:20 > 0:41:23That just makes such sense. So Plato's talking about mud,
0:41:23 > 0:41:26but actually what it is, is huge levels of pumice on the ocean?
0:41:26 > 0:41:32Absolutely. This is our account of antiquity of this eruption.
0:41:34 > 0:41:37This was an eruption that shook much of the planet.
0:41:37 > 0:41:40Ash was transported as far north as the Black Sea,
0:41:40 > 0:41:45as far east as Central Turkey, and as far south as the Nile Delta.
0:41:45 > 0:41:50Global temperatures dipped, stunting plant growth even in Ireland.
0:41:52 > 0:41:58Closer to home, the eruption produced devastating shockwaves throughout the Aegean.
0:41:58 > 0:42:04Pyroclastic flows sped across the sea on a bed of superheated steam.
0:42:09 > 0:42:13There would have been a ring around Santorini
0:42:13 > 0:42:16of pyroclastic flows all going over water, 10 kilometres or more away.
0:42:16 > 0:42:20Then they would have started to go underwater and then, of course,
0:42:20 > 0:42:22the sea would have been heated up by that.
0:42:22 > 0:42:23But the most importantly,
0:42:23 > 0:42:25a sea wave would be pushed up,
0:42:25 > 0:42:26creating a tsunami.
0:42:29 > 0:42:34If even a tenth of these pushed the ocean enough to make tsunami waves
0:42:34 > 0:42:40then we had dozens and dozens and dozens of tsunamis sweeping across the ocean.
0:42:43 > 0:42:49As the tsunamis gathered momentum, they pulsated away from Thera.
0:42:49 > 0:42:52One of their destinations... Minoan Crete.
0:43:01 > 0:43:03So what colour is it? What am I actually looking for here?
0:43:03 > 0:43:07We're looking basically for water-worn volcanic ash.
0:43:07 > 0:43:12'Archaeologist Sandy MacGillivray and tsunami expert Costas Synolakis
0:43:12 > 0:43:18'are investigating the scale of the tsunamis by mapping Theran pumice on Crete's northern coastline.'
0:43:18 > 0:43:20Here's some.
0:43:20 > 0:43:22Here's a piece there.
0:43:23 > 0:43:26So light, isn't it?
0:43:26 > 0:43:28Isn't that a bit of...?
0:43:28 > 0:43:31- That's a Minoan pot, isn't it?- Sure.
0:43:31 > 0:43:37- This is part of a late Bronze Age pithos, with this herring bone pattern on it.- That's amazing.
0:43:37 > 0:43:39But it must have floated here.
0:43:39 > 0:43:42It's exactly what we like.
0:43:42 > 0:43:47It floats and it gives us an idea of how high the wave reached.
0:43:47 > 0:43:49This site has been undisturbed.
0:43:49 > 0:43:53This is why it is so important to us from the point of view of modelling.
0:43:53 > 0:43:56So the tsunami would have carried this up here?
0:43:56 > 0:44:00At least to this point. It could have carried it further up
0:44:00 > 0:44:02and then have washed down with the rain,
0:44:02 > 0:44:08but this helps us bracket the size of the wave right offshore.
0:44:09 > 0:44:13It's been estimated that the Theran tsunami rose at least
0:44:13 > 0:44:1565 feet above sea level in places
0:44:15 > 0:44:18and travelled up to five miles inland.
0:44:25 > 0:44:29With Sandy's advice, Costas has developed a computer simulation
0:44:29 > 0:44:33of how the tsunamis would have travelled as they pulsated away from Thera.
0:44:35 > 0:44:38This is the initial wave.
0:44:40 > 0:44:41We follow it all the way to Crete.
0:44:41 > 0:44:45The first wave causes the shoreline to retreat, to move offshore.
0:44:45 > 0:44:50We're less than an hour from the eruption and already the south side
0:44:50 > 0:44:54of Crete and the eastern Peloponnese are experiencing
0:44:54 > 0:44:57- the big wave.- It's so fast!
0:44:57 > 0:44:59It's like a steam train, isn't it?
0:44:59 > 0:45:04And so what we're seeing here, the green is the wave as we think of it, so the tall crest of the wave,
0:45:04 > 0:45:09and all this purple and blue, right on the edge of Asia Minor,
0:45:09 > 0:45:13- that's the kind of drawback that you were describing earlier.- Yes.
0:45:13 > 0:45:18Costas, I know that you've gone all round the world looking at tsunamis and their effects.
0:45:18 > 0:45:21How far can you draw on that data and make a comparison with what's
0:45:21 > 0:45:25happening here on Crete and the Theran eruption?
0:45:25 > 0:45:28From recent tsunamis we have a certain feeling
0:45:28 > 0:45:32of what the inundation, the debris line looks like.
0:45:32 > 0:45:35This is a picture from Sri Lanka.
0:45:35 > 0:45:37You see where the debris line is.
0:45:37 > 0:45:41We would be measuring the difference between this debris and the shoreline.
0:45:41 > 0:45:47Then we will say, well, this is how high the wave penetrated on this occasion.
0:45:56 > 0:46:01In our view, the impact of the Minoan tsunami in Crete
0:46:01 > 0:46:06was very similar to the impact of the Boxing Day tsunami,
0:46:06 > 0:46:08the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka.
0:46:26 > 0:46:30We think that the size of the wave of Amnisos
0:46:30 > 0:46:36was very similar to the size of the wave of Sri Lanka.
0:46:36 > 0:46:39So this is a very good sort of analogy for me
0:46:39 > 0:46:45to try to visualise what it must have looked like for the Minoans, the wave coming in.
0:46:50 > 0:46:53They're such terrible images, aren't they?
0:46:53 > 0:46:5830,000 people died in Sri Lanka within a few minutes.
0:46:58 > 0:47:02So, if you've got 70% of the population dying,
0:47:02 > 0:47:05what do you think, Sandy, that says about what happened to Crete?
0:47:05 > 0:47:08Because most people live along the coast, don't they?
0:47:08 > 0:47:11I think so. There's the city of Knossos, which is inland,
0:47:11 > 0:47:15but otherwise it's very much open coastline, unprotected harbours.
0:47:17 > 0:47:21The death toll would have been staggering, phenomenal.
0:47:30 > 0:47:34The impact of the Theran eruption extended beyond the death toll.
0:47:38 > 0:47:42Minoan society was shaken to its core.
0:47:59 > 0:48:03Every year there's a new excavating season here.
0:48:03 > 0:48:06Huge amounts of new Bronze Age material is found.
0:48:06 > 0:48:12It's almost as if Minoan Crete is a giant jigsaw puzzle that is slowly being pieced back together again.
0:48:12 > 0:48:16From some of these fragments we can get clues as to how the Minoans
0:48:16 > 0:48:19reacted to the Theran eruption and the tsunami.
0:48:27 > 0:48:31What starts to happen is that the pottery is decorated
0:48:31 > 0:48:34in this really weird way.
0:48:34 > 0:48:37It's called marine style, and basically the surfaces of
0:48:37 > 0:48:41the pots are suddenly painted with slithering creatures from the deep.
0:48:41 > 0:48:47You can see here, you've got an octopus' tentacle above a rock with seaweed.
0:48:47 > 0:48:50There's a starfish.
0:48:51 > 0:48:53That's a conch shell,
0:48:53 > 0:48:58and this is a kind of a giant shellfish.
0:48:58 > 0:49:01It's almost as if the Minoans are trying to placate
0:49:01 > 0:49:04or even kind of face down the sea demons
0:49:04 > 0:49:06that have suddenly arrived on their island.
0:49:12 > 0:49:16With most of the ancient cultures, the sea is where we come from.
0:49:16 > 0:49:22We rise out of the sea. So the idea that this place comes back and devastates us
0:49:22 > 0:49:24is a very powerful message.
0:49:24 > 0:49:28So the first thing they do after the tsunamis, they rebuild the temples.
0:49:28 > 0:49:34In recent tsunamis, in 1998 there's a tsunami in Papua New Guinea.
0:49:34 > 0:49:36What's the first thing...?
0:49:36 > 0:49:40It's a devastating tsunami. What's the first thing that they do afterwards?
0:49:40 > 0:49:43Rebuild the churches. Why? There are missionaries there.
0:49:43 > 0:49:48The locals felt that it was a punishment from God for their impiety.
0:49:55 > 0:50:01In the 1970s, archaeologists made a grim discovery at this Bronze Age shrine in Crete.
0:50:04 > 0:50:09It showed how the Minoans would also have responded in the face of a cataclysmic natural disaster.
0:50:13 > 0:50:19In this room there was the body of a young man aged about 17 or 18.
0:50:19 > 0:50:22He'd been trussed up and he was laid out on this altar.
0:50:26 > 0:50:29Next to his head there was a bronze dagger.
0:50:29 > 0:50:32We can tell from the bone evidence that one of his arteries
0:50:32 > 0:50:37had been cut and his body had been bled completely dry.
0:50:37 > 0:50:41Experts believe that this young man was being sacrificed
0:50:41 > 0:50:46to try to stop one of the many earthquakes that shook this region before the Theran eruption.
0:50:48 > 0:50:51A few paces out here there was another body.
0:50:53 > 0:50:59This was a man lying face down and he had been carrying a vessel full of some kind of liquid.
0:50:59 > 0:51:05Presumably it was human blood from the sacrifice, a desperate attempt,
0:51:05 > 0:51:08a gift to try to appease the gods.
0:51:10 > 0:51:16It's believed the priest performing this ritual died as the building collapsed during the earthquake.
0:51:16 > 0:51:20This shows that in the face of a natural disaster like the Theran eruption
0:51:20 > 0:51:25the Minoans might have gone as far as sacrificing one of their fellow human beings.
0:51:28 > 0:51:32The Minoans were very, very close to nature
0:51:32 > 0:51:37and so when something like this happens you really become very circumspect. How did this happen?
0:51:37 > 0:51:45Why did this happen? How can we appease these natural forces so that perhaps it won't happen again?
0:51:47 > 0:51:51For a people who were saturated with a superstitious piety,
0:51:51 > 0:51:54a dreadful natural disaster like this
0:51:54 > 0:51:58could be nothing other than a punishment from the gods.
0:51:58 > 0:52:04So what happened here wasn't just a physical but a psychological apocalypse.
0:52:14 > 0:52:16This is a really significant symbol.
0:52:16 > 0:52:21Actually, you can only see it at this time of day when the sunlight starts to get low.
0:52:21 > 0:52:26What you've got here is the traditional mason's mark of Knossos.
0:52:26 > 0:52:28It's a double axe head.
0:52:28 > 0:52:31But just look what's been rammed into it.
0:52:31 > 0:52:34These are the prongs of a trident.
0:52:34 > 0:52:39Now of course, the trident is the weapon of the almighty god of the sea,
0:52:39 > 0:52:42the deity that we now call Poseidon,
0:52:42 > 0:52:46the god that brought so much trouble to this island.
0:52:51 > 0:52:55Poseidon was fearsomely powerful in Minoan society.
0:52:55 > 0:53:00Both the sea god and the earth shaker,
0:53:00 > 0:53:03he could inflict devastating punishments at will.
0:53:07 > 0:53:09This is yet another strong link to the Atlantis legend.
0:53:09 > 0:53:14According to Plato, Poseidon was the master of Atlantis
0:53:14 > 0:53:16and when its people fell foul of him
0:53:16 > 0:53:21their island was swallowed by the sea.
0:53:26 > 0:53:32150 years after the Theran eruption the Minoan civilisation had all but disappeared.
0:53:32 > 0:53:36We don't know why exactly, but I think it's true to say that the eruption
0:53:36 > 0:53:42marked the beginning of the end for Europe's first great culture.
0:53:43 > 0:53:49When you think back to the terrible destruction that ranged right across this island and beyond,
0:53:49 > 0:53:53to Egypt and to Asia Minor and even to the outposts of western Europe,
0:53:53 > 0:54:00then you realise that this was devastation quite simply could not ever have been forgotten.
0:54:01 > 0:54:04Almost immediately this must have become a horror story
0:54:04 > 0:54:09passed down from father to son and mother to daughter.
0:54:09 > 0:54:12Of course, that's what logic tells us must have happened.
0:54:12 > 0:54:16But the historian in me needs to see the evidence in black and white.
0:54:16 > 0:54:20How can we try to prove that the catastrophe that happened here
0:54:20 > 0:54:24was still remembered 1,000 years later in Plato's day?
0:54:27 > 0:54:32We have an increasing body of evidence that the memory of prehistoric events
0:54:32 > 0:54:35can be preserved through tales and legends.
0:54:35 > 0:54:41It's a kind of oral history that is surprisingly resilient.
0:54:46 > 0:54:50Irving Finkel is one of the world's leading experts in deciphering ancient languages.
0:54:50 > 0:54:55He believes he can trace how the memory of real events and real people can survive
0:54:55 > 0:54:57through oral history for hundreds of years
0:54:57 > 0:55:00before they enter the written record.
0:55:00 > 0:55:06One prime example is one of the oldest stories in the world, the epic of Gilgamesh.
0:55:10 > 0:55:13If you want to see this you have to turn on this light.
0:55:15 > 0:55:18You can see the writing, it's pressed into the clay in rows,
0:55:18 > 0:55:21and in fact the name of Gilgamesh even occurs up here.
0:55:21 > 0:55:27The epic of Gilgamesh is a story about a king who is part man, part god.
0:55:27 > 0:55:29Irving Finkel believes it is based on a real king
0:55:29 > 0:55:32who lived in ancient Iraq at the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC,
0:55:32 > 0:55:361,000 years before the story was ever written down,
0:55:36 > 0:55:40proving that oral memory can be exceptionally tenacious.
0:55:40 > 0:55:43The chain of all the information that we have,
0:55:43 > 0:55:47which is archaeological, plus writing, plus common sense,
0:55:47 > 0:55:53those three components, when you put them together, to me it is a certainty that Gilgamesh
0:55:53 > 0:55:56was a really unusual and heroic person
0:55:56 > 0:55:58who lived at a very remote time,
0:55:58 > 0:56:03and that there's a continuous oral stream of tradition from the death of Gilgamesh
0:56:03 > 0:56:06until this was written for the King of Assyria.
0:56:06 > 0:56:10So you don't always have to have all the links in the chain for the chain to be there.
0:56:10 > 0:56:16In the particular case of Atlantis, I think that there are elements in here
0:56:16 > 0:56:18which directly relate to events of the Bronze Age.
0:56:18 > 0:56:23Am I a mad Atlantis hunter, or would you support my thesis?
0:56:23 > 0:56:28I would support your thesis and I support it out of a long held conviction,
0:56:28 > 0:56:34which is that when you have such a big thing as this cataclysm,
0:56:34 > 0:56:40which is used by Plato as a kind of intellectual jumping off board for other material,
0:56:40 > 0:56:46to me it seems axiomatic that, just as he argues that this happens once, so it in fact did,
0:56:46 > 0:56:52that it's a real thing that somehow survived, just like with this mad stuff on bits of clay.
0:56:52 > 0:56:56- Plato's remembering something that is too important to forget?- Yeah.
0:57:08 > 0:57:12Plato's Atlantis myth sets down that all too familiar story
0:57:12 > 0:57:16of the rise and then the fall of mankind.
0:57:16 > 0:57:23He immortalised a great story and a great idea, one that still captures our imagination today.
0:57:25 > 0:57:29His account was first and foremost a moral fable.
0:57:31 > 0:57:34But there are numerous clues that Plato based Atlantis
0:57:34 > 0:57:39on an oral memory of Bronze Age Thera.
0:57:39 > 0:57:47The hard evidence shows us that here there was here a sophisticated trading civilisation that flourished
0:57:47 > 0:57:49and was then swallowed by the sea,
0:57:49 > 0:57:54ravaged by a disaster of legendary proportions.
0:57:54 > 0:57:59Surely this is the root of Plato's Atlantis legend.
0:58:03 > 0:58:06Legions of treasure hunters and pseudo scientists
0:58:06 > 0:58:10have projected their dreams and desires onto the myth.
0:58:10 > 0:58:13But however beguiling the Atlantis of the imagination,
0:58:13 > 0:58:19it will never be as intriguing as the real place, the real event,
0:58:19 > 0:58:22and the real people of the Bronze Age
0:58:22 > 0:58:26that inspired Plato's magnificent tale.
0:58:46 > 0:58:49Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:49 > 0:58:52E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk