Giant marble pyramid-shaped island complex rising from sea uncovered, revealing secrets of ancient Greece’s origins
Exclusive: Thousands of years of history being unlocked in the Aegean isles which could provide groundbreaking knowledge of ancient civilisations

David Keys Archaeology Correspondent 1 day ago

Archaeologists are, for the first time, discovering the probable origins of ancient Greece.

Excavations on a tiny island in the Aegean Sea – 125 miles southeast of Athens – are revealing the earliest truly monumental complex of buildings ever unearthed anywhere in the Greek world.

Dating back 4,600 years, the site may also have been part of the inspiration for a key aspect of Greek religion – the idea that mountain tops were the dwelling places of the gods.

The complex – on a mountain peak-shaped islet off the coast of the Aegean island of Keros (part of the Cyclades archipelago) – is totally changing archaeologists’ understanding of prehistoric Greece.

Until now, nobody had realised the true scale of the complex – and the gargantuan effort that had gone into constructing it.

Archaeologists now believe that, in order to construct the complex, early Bronze Age Greeks embarked on at least 3,500 maritime voyages to transport between 7,000 and 10,000 tonnes of shining white marble from one Aegean island to another.

Each return voyage would have required up to 24 crew members to paddle for around five hours.

“It is by far the largest prehistoric marine transport operation that has ever come to light anywhere in the world,” said Dr Julian Whitewright, a leading maritime archaeologist at the University of Southampton.

“It demonstrates quite clearly just how important, and integral to their culture, seafaring was to these early Bronze Age Aegean people.”

The voyages – totalling around 45,000 miles – allowed the architects to construct what is thought to have been a huge religious sanctuary consisting of up to 60 marble buildings, which were constructed specifically to glisten in the sun.

What’s more, the architects “terra-formed” the pyramid-shaped island “mini-mountain”, known in recent centuries as Dhaskalio (possibly just meaning “islet”), to create around 1,000m of artificial terracing, arranged in six “steps” on its steep slopes.

These roughly six-metre wide terraces appear to have been built specifically to accommodate all the buildings. The summit itself was not initially built on – but instead had a small, probably sacred, open area where votive offerings may have been deposited.

“Our investigation has been transforming our understanding of early Bronze Age Cycladic culture and suggests that these very early Greeks were organisationally, technically and politically much more advanced than previously thought,” said the project’s co-director Michael Boyd, of Cambridge University’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.

Nothing like this monumental complex has ever been found from this period in or around Greece before.

Although the current archaeological investigations on Dhaskalio have been going on for the past four years, it’s only more detailed examination of the resultant data over the past 12 months that has revealed the true scale of the complex, and the transport logistics and construction work associated with it.

But the remarkable nature of the site does fit into a much more widely dispersed series of monumental construction traditions from western Europe and the Middle East.

Intriguingly, it was built within 100 years or so of the creation of Stonehenge, the first Egyptian pyramids, the great cities of the Indus Valley and the first known Mesopotamian kingdoms.

This broader context shows quite clearly that Dhaskalio was part of a much wider cultural and political phenomenon involving huge ultra-ambitious construction and political projects.

These Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Indus Valley and western European traditions were almost certainly not directly related to each other – but were probably the result of a common stimulus, namely the spread and intensification of early metal usage, and the mercantile, cultural and political changes that process triggered.

Equally significantly, Dhaskalio shows that, contrary to previous belief, Greece was part and parcel of that much wider phenomenon.

While the individual buildings on Dhaskalio were not themselves truly monumental, the complex as a whole certainly was.

The 7,000-10,000 tonnes of white marble, needed for the project, were quarried in the southeastern part of Naxos, a large island around 6.5 miles northwest of Dhaskalio. Each return trip from Naxos to Dhaskalio would therefore have been around 13 miles.

Images of Aegean Cycladic boats survive – so it is known that they were each only 10-15m long and capable of carrying only between one and two tonnes of cargo.

The prehistoric Aegean project engineers then had to create the mountainside terraces to accommodate the dozens of white marble buildings – some of which were two storeys and up to 10m long. Because the entire complex was constructed according to a set plan with buildings of very similar design, it is thought that the entire island sanctuary was constructed over a relatively short period – probably between 20 and 40 years.

Its existence – and the huge and consistent organisation of labour and transport that had to be deployed – strongly suggests that there was a strong and stable political entity involved, potentially based on Keros or possibly Naxos...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-a8997666.html