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WET & HOT NEWS ! > Minoans
BBC to make Atlantis movie
The 01 Mar. 2010 at 04:19Miscellaneous
By David Bentley - Coventry Telegraph.com
A new British movie is to tell the story of the ancient cataclysm that's believed to be the basis for the Atlantis legend.
The BBC has announced the TV film, to be called Atlantis and directed by Primeval's Tony Mitchell, will "tell the dramatic story of the greatest natural disaster to shake the ancient world, a disaster that triggered the downfall of a civilisation and spawned a legend."
The film will be made using the same techniques as Zack Snyder's Spartan war epic 300 and will be accompanied by a documentary looking at the historical evidence.
Around 1620 BC a gigantic volcano in the Aegean Sea stirred from its 19,000-year slumber. The eruption tore apart the island of Thera, producing massive tsunamis that flooded the nearby island of Crete, the centre of Europe's first great civilisation - the Minoans.
This apocalyptic event, many experts now believe, provided the inspiration for the legend of Atlantis. Based on the work of leading scientists, archaeologists and historians, this drama immerses viewers in the exotic world of the Minoans.Starring Reece Ritchie (10,000BC, The Lovely Bones, Prince Of Persia) and Stephanie Leonidas (MirrorMask), Atlantis is the first British TV drama to use the 'virtual backlot' technique of the movie 300. It will be filmed in a studio against green-screen backgrounds to which computer-generated scenery is later added.
First Minoan Shipwreck
The 21 Feb. 2010 at 03:45Underwater Archeology
By Eti Bonn-Muller - Archaeology
An unprecedented find off the coast of Crete.Crete has seduced archaeologists for more than a century, luring them to its rocky shores with fantastic tales of legendary kings, cunning deities, and mythical creatures. The largest of the Greek islands, Crete was the land of the Minoans (3100-1050 B.C.), a Bronze Age civilization named after its first ruler, King Minos, the "master of the seas" who is said to have rid the waters of pirates.
According to Thucydides, he also established the first thalassocracy, or maritime empire. The Minoans were renowned for their seafaring prowess, which opened trade routes with the powerful kingdoms of Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant.
Depictions of ships abound on Minoan seals and frescoes. They are detailed enough to show that the vessels were impressive: generally, they had 15 oars on each side and square sails, and were probably about 50 feet long. But little more was known about actual Minoan seafaring--until Greek archaeologist Elpida Hadjidaki became the first to discover a Minoan shipwreck.
Hadjidaki, a self-described "harbor girl," was born and grew up in the Cretan seaside town of Chania. An experienced and passionate diver trained in classical archaeology, she received funding from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory in 2003 to search for early ships near Crete. "I always wanted to find a Minoan shipwreck," she says, "so I started looking for one."For nearly a month, she and a team of three sponge and coral divers aboard a 20-foot-long wooden fishing boat trolled up and down the island's shores. Together with George Athanasakis of Athens Polytechnic University, they used side-scanning sonar and detected some 20 "targets," or anomalies, that Hadjidaki sent her divers to investigate, often reaching depths of 400 feet.
One by one, they turned out to be a depressing array of natural geological formations and portions of the seafloor ripped up by the nets of deep-sea trawlers, as well as a World War II airplane, a 19th-century shipwreck, and several pairs of shoes.
Sailing Against Conventional Wisdom
The 13 Feb. 2010 at 05:42Ancien Maritime History
By Dalya Alberge - The Wall Street Journal
It takes a brave soul to rewrite history by sailing against current thought. More than 500 years after Christopher Columbus "discovered" America, another seaman is doing just that, entering previously uncharted academic waters with claims that other "Europeans" -- the Minoans -- got there first, thousands of years earlier.
Gavin Menzies, 72 years old, is drawing on his experience as a former British Royal Navy submarine commander to prove in a book he is writing that the Minoans were such supreme seafarers that they crossed an ocean and discovered the New World 4,000 years ago.
Eight years after he made controversial headlines with his first American history book, "1421: The Year China Discovered America," which sold more than a million copies in 130 countries, he may spark debate anew by claiming that the Bronze Age civilization of Crete, which built magnificent palaces, devised systems of writing and developed a trading empire, got rich on vast quantities of copper mined in America.
Transworld Publishers undertook his first book, in which he claimed that a Chinese eunuch led a fleet of junks to America 71 years before Columbus. The book led to invitations to lecture at universities including Harvard, to an honorary professorship at Yunnan University in China, to the sale of film rights to Sky Motion Pictures and to HarperCollins snapping up the sequel in 2008, "1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance."
"Revisionist history tends to sell exceptionally well," says Luigi Bonomi, a leading literary agent who represents Mr. Menzies. "There is a huge audience eager to read new things about history."First Minoan Shipwreck
The 08 Jan. 2010 at 09:48Underwater Archeology
By Eti Bonn-Muller - Archaeology
Crete has seduced archaeologists for more than a century, luring them to its rocky shores with fantastic tales of legendary kings, cunning deities, and mythical creatures. The largest of the Greek islands, Crete was the land of the Minoans (3100-1050 B.C.), a Bronze Age civilization named after its first ruler, King Minos, the "master of the seas" who is said to have rid the waters of pirates.
According to Thucydides, he also established the first thalassocracy, or maritime empire. The Minoans were renowned for their seafaring prowess, which opened trade routes with the powerful kingdoms of Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant.
With the island of Pseira in the background, Hadjidaki proudly displays an intact, oval-mouth amphora she has just excavated at a depth of 131 feet. (Courtesy V. Mentoyannis)
Depictions of ships abound on Minoan seals and frescoes. They are detailed enough to show that the vessels were impressive: generally, they had 15 oars on each side and square sails, and were probably about 50 feet long. But little more was known about actual Minoan seafaring--until Greek archaeologist Elpida Hadjidaki became the first to discover a Minoan shipwreck.
Hadjidaki, a self-described "harbor girl," was born and grew up in the Cretan seaside town of Chania. An experienced and passionate diver trained in classical archaeology, she received funding from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory in 2003 to search for early ships near Crete. "I always wanted to find a Minoan shipwreck," she says, "so I started looking for one."
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