Imagine what it would be like to discover the remains of a ancient civilization hidden in the ocean bottom?
This is how a group of divers must have felt when they accidentally discovered the ruins of what appeared to be an ancient abandoned city under the seanear the shores of the Greek city of Zakynthos.
The discovery took place in 2013 and since then several underwater archaeologists Specialists have come to investigate a provenance that has turned out to be quite more curious than they expected. And it is that, according to the studies carried out, the constructions found had not been manufactured by the man’s hand, but by a much smaller ancient civilization.
The origin of the underwater ruins of Zakynthos
When dealing with an area of great technical activity, the first idea was that the ruins, found at a depth of between 2 and 6 meters, could be the result of a tsunami What would have submerged the city thousands of years.
It all made sense. It was about twelve hectares of ruins made up of thirty columns that they arrange themselves forming a kind of avenue Around the pavement of what could have been a backyard.
However, no rest of ceramicsas a goat would expect from such a site, so archaeologists continued to investigate, intrigued by the origin of so strange civilization.
And what was his surprise when he found that the architects who designed that city were not fond of ceramics and marble, but of the dolomite, a material that in this case was the result of bacteria metabolism. Yes, yes, you read correctly. Bacteria!
What is dolomite?
Dolomite-properties-600×329
The area where these ruins were found formerly had a large geothermal activity, so it contained a large number of hydrothermal fireplaces producing methane in which communities live sulforreductive bacteria that fed on said gas. This leads to the transformation of calcareous materials surrounding the fireplace in a material composed of calcium carbonate and magnesium, known as dolomite.
Therefore, as the methane It flowed up through the sediments were forming those curious shapes that at first were confused with constructions of a ancient Greek civilization.
There will be no ceramic vessels, but don’t tell me the discovery was not interesting. A great find for archeology and even greater for science.
