00:00But just as spectacular were the myths of the ancient Greeks, and there was no
00:05greater story than the lost world of Atlantis. The idea of Atlantis originates
00:11from the writings of the Greek philosopher Plato. He wrote about a
00:15utopian world that became corrupted and, as punishment, destroyed.
00:23No one has ever resolved whether the Atlantis myth was a moral allegory or an
00:28historical story. But the search to find this lost civilization has persisted ever
00:34since. And the events, which once struck a ring of islands in the eastern
00:39Mediterranean, have long been considered the inspiration of the Atlantis legend.
00:45Three and a half thousand years ago, an island volcano in the Aegean Sea erupted.
00:52The explosion left behind a vast bay beside the Greek island of Santorini. Had this
00:58been the destruction of Atlantis? To try and find out, archaeologists are examining
01:04the layers of volcanic strata on the island, which have preserved a picture of how life
01:09was before the eruption.
01:12Right here, ground zero. This is ground zero. Man lived on that surface. Man walked that surface.
01:19Man built a city on that surface. Here is a residue of man, what appears to be a broken
01:24field wall by man on that surface. And then came the pumice, the down-rained pumice, piece
01:31by piece, particle by particle, burying that landscape, knocking a tree down. That's the
01:38remnant of a tree. It's now a hole because the wood is rotted away. And then the eruption
01:44continued with tens of feet of more pumice and ash.
01:51A tantalizing glimpse. But who were these people of Santorini? And are they a key to discovering
01:57the Atlantean race Plato described?
02:01He wrote of a great island power. At its center, a massive city built on concentric circles of
02:08land and water. And at its heart, a citadel full of spectacular treasures. Was Plato's
02:16circular city inspired by the round volcano which had erupted beside Santorini?
02:23The link between Atlantis and the island of Santorini hit the headlines in 1966, when a Greek
02:29archaeologist working on the southern side of the island uncovered some of the most beautiful
02:34works of art ever to be found at an ancient site.
02:40What was found was an unbelievably well-preserved town. This was due to the fact that that specific
02:48settlement was buried under the ash of the volcano. This layer of ash is somewhere near
02:56eight or ten meters, so it's quite a thick deposit, which means that two- and three-storey buildings
03:03were actually preserved within this layer.
03:06But the most revealing discovery was of a wall painting. It represented a map of Santorini,
03:12and in the middle, it featured the volcano island before it erupted.
03:17It shows a profile of the island. One, two, three peaks. Those three peaks we see today.
03:26Going down farther, we see a waterway that surrounds a central island, a fairly large island.
03:33And on that island, a city. The impression one gets from this painting is a society that
03:44was able to have a large city on a small island, that they had a culture that would allow more
03:52than subsistence living. It allowed a large city to develop here and be supported by trade,
03:57exports and imports. Plato had talked of an island civilization. And if the wall painting is to be
04:05believed, then perhaps it was that civilization that had once prospered here in the bay.
04:11Where we're sailing right here, we'd be bumping ashore 3,600 years ago against an island.
04:18And then if we believed that wall painting, we wouldn't just be bumping into an island,
04:23we'd be bumping into a little city that was sitting right here.
04:26And the wall painting is our closest representation as to how that city might have looked.
04:34It's amazingly impressive. They are showing the landscape, the boats, the costumes, the people,
04:413,600 years ago in the Late Bronze Age. It's a snapshot of a past life.
04:47The painting bears an instant similarity to Plato's description of the circular city of Atlantis.
04:53But the people who had built it had no idea of the dangers that threatened to destroy them.
05:03There hadn't been any big major eruptions in this part of the world for thousands of years.
05:09So I don't think they had any concept of what a volcano was.
05:16The eruption began with a cloud of ash.
05:19The inhabitants on the adjacent island of Santorini fled for their lives as tons of
05:24volcanic rock erupted from a huge fissure.
05:28It goes up to 15 feet thick, this pumice, as it piled up.
05:32Before it ever got to 15 feet thick, they were gone.
05:35I mean, they left quickly. And that was a smart thing to do,
05:38because then it became a huge explosive eruption.
05:42Water from the sea flowed into the crack on the island volcano.
05:46You want an explosion? Mix water with rising lava.
05:50And you've got a disaster. We had a disaster here.
05:55There's a plume here rising up, perhaps 25 miles.
05:59And everything that's on that island is incorporated into that plume.
06:04The islanders of Santorini watched the island city vaporize.
06:08The volcano then collapsed back on itself, leaving a massive hole over 900 feet deep.
06:16That hole is called a caldera.
06:18It was filled by the ocean, and this provides this dramatic landscape today.
06:23The Atlantis legend lives on as marine archaeologists continue to search for signs of a lost city beneath the sea.
06:33And the catastrophic events which struck the island of Santorini have ensured that Plato's puzzle remains indelibly written into history.
06:43Such a massive, such an enormous calamity that had to get stuck in human memory.
06:50And things are stuck in human memory through mythology.
06:54And myths, then, remember this eruption.
