A sunken Greek city, first discovered 40 years ago, is finally being surveyed with modern technology, and it's a very likely candidate, considering when the sea overran it, for being Homer's Atlantis. How cool is that? The site covers around 30,000 square meters.
"There is now no doubt that this is the oldest submerged town in the world," said Dr Jon Henderson, associate professor of underwater archaeology at the University of Nottingham. "It has remains dating from 2800 to 1200 BC, long before the glory days of classical Greece. There are older sunken sites in the world but none can be considered to be planned towns such as this, which is why it is unique."
…
"Atlantis was a myth but it is a myth that keeps underwater exploration going," said [Dmitri] Sakellariou [from the Greek Institute of Oceanography]. "Less than 1% of the world's ocean floors have ever been surveyed. This is an extraordinary find but there is still a lot more down there that has to be found."
BREAKING: Archaeologists have also revealed that the cause of Atlantis' sinking was not government-run health care.
Why it's so tough to combat Muslim extremism:
From a David Rohde story in the New York Times. Rohde was a prisoner of the Taliban for seven months.
My captors harbored many delusions about Westerners. But I also saw how some of the consequences of Washington’s antiterrorism policies had galvanized the Taliban. Commanders fixated on the deaths of Afghan, Iraqi and Palestinian civilians in military airstrikes, as well as the American detention of Muslim prisoners who had been held for years without being charged. America, Europe and Israel preached democracy, human rights and impartial justice to the Muslim world, they said, but failed to follow those principles themselves.
Since we're faced with combatting these people, we need to reconsider the most effective ways of finishing the job, lest we take one step forward, two back, as we seem to be committed to doing.
Glenn Greenwald examines the story here.
