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Science

Oldest Submerged City Visualized With CGI 84

Posted by Soulskill from the what's-old-is-new dept.
Stirling Newberry writes "Nottingham University's Pavlopetri project spent months measuring a city that sank beneath the waves 3,000 years ago, perhaps in a tsunami. The result is a BBC documentary that features a detailed CGI reconstruction. 'The entire city – covering 20 acres – has been surveyed in ultra-high definition, with error margins of less than three centimeters. ... [T]he survey team has so far located scores of buildings, half a dozen major streets and even religious shrines and tombs.' eScience News chimes in about the oldest known submerged city, first inhabited 5,000 years ago and rediscovered in 1967. Of course, Slashdot readers will probably want to dig into the details of how stereo-vision mapping was used (PDF) to create the map in the first place."
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Oldest Submerged City Visualized With CGI More

Oldest Submerged City Visualized With CGI

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  • Where is the visualization? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I just want to see the pictures.

    • I just want to see the pictures.

      I can do without their new fangled CGI, I just want to see a layout of the town. If it's been of known since 1967 surely there's a map, however crude, of it out there.

      • Re:Where A MAP? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by mikael ( 484 ) on Friday October 07, 2011 @10:01PM (#37645566)

        A submerged city would have be covered with sediment, coral and fauna. A 1970's archeological survey map simplified for audiences would consist of some black squiggly lines superimposed over a blurry underwater photograph, providing conclusive proof that the structure was man-made.

    • Only available in the UK, BBC documentary. Luckily I have a UK VPN connection :) The visualization results were not very impressive though the brick-by-brick build-up of the virtual houses was interesting to watch.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Kaetemi ( 928767 )

      Where's the 3d mesh & texture data?

  • Uhm... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Friday October 07, 2011 @06:18PM (#37644296)

    Maybe I'm wrong, but ISTM that a tsunami would only submerge a city temporarily. To stay under for 3000 years you need rising sea, sinking ground, or perhaps a sea breaking into a previously dry area below sea level.

    • That was my thought. Most likely it's a similar phenomenon where a plate will suddenly drop leaving whatever it is substantially lower than before the quake. I'm not sure what the proper term for that is. A tsunami is caused by a temporary drop in the sea floor, if the ocean floor didn't rise again after dropping you wouldn't get the characteristic wave.

      • A Tsunami can be caused by any sudden change in the sea floor level. (other causes are also possible) The ocean rushes in to level things out (fill in the hole) and the momentum of that rushing movement causes the surge.

        Fill a bucket with water in a swimming pool starting with the top of the bucket level with the water. Try to yank it out quickly it without a wave propagating and you will see the problem. There were probably tsunamis at the same time as the quakes that lowered the water levels. The wave

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jgoemat ( 565882 )

        if the ocean floor didn't rise again after dropping you wouldn't get the characteristic wave.

        Why not? After the slip occurs, what force would move it back to where it was before?

    • Prime mortages (Score:5, Funny)

      by DeadDecoy ( 877617 ) on Friday October 07, 2011 @06:23PM (#37644356)
      Clearly submerged mortages sunk the housing market and all assets were lost when liquidity flooded the market.

    • Re:Uhm... (Score:4, Funny)

      by RDW ( 41497 ) on Friday October 07, 2011 @06:25PM (#37644378)

      To stay under for 3000 years you need rising sea, sinking ground, or perhaps a sea breaking into a previously dry area below sea level.

      ...or non-Euclidean geometry loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours.

      • actually I think it would be 'non-Euclidean geometry gleefully redolent of quantum spheres and multiple dimensions apart from ours'

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mspohr ( 589790 )
      You are right. The summary is wrong. If you read the linked articles they say it was sunk by a series of earthquakes that caused that area so sink.
    • RC Flemming, the discoverer of the city, suggests that there are signs of a geological event around 1000 BC in that area where the result was a tsunami and a lowering of the coastal areas as part of the same geologic event. The original submission had a link to the journal article which went into greater detail how this combination may have sunk this, and other, cities from the period.

    • Sea levels rising for cyclical climatological reasons (ie long before Republicans driving SUVs) ruins the narrative. Ergo, tsunami "must have done it".

  • Someone suggests its Atlantis. Atlantis never existed. It was a rhetorical device.

    • Wrong! (Score:2, Funny)

      by RobinEggs ( 1453925 )
      Of *course* Atlantis existed. Atlanteans are the primary genetic source of the genes predisposing people to believe in conspiracy theories. All of the fine, upstanding men and women who believe in the Illuminati, UFOs, and Lizard Elvis owe their life obsessions to the brave few who escaped that grand City Upon the Sea.

    • Someone suggests its Atlantis. Atlantis never existed. It was a rhetorical device.

      But it usually gets "discovered" every six months or so, and unless I haven't been following the news closely enough, we're overdue. So we may have to let this one in just to avoid a statistical fluke.

    • Re:In Before... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Grishnakh ( 216268 ) on Friday October 07, 2011 @06:31PM (#37644428)

      People used to think the same thing about Troy. Then some German guy found it in the late 1800s.

      Of course, the real Troy wasn't nearly as large as what Homer's story would have you believe, and there's no evidence of involvement by deities, but the city is real. Similarly, Atlantis, if it exists at all, probably doesn't have any advanced technology like flying machines and the like, but there could very well be a real city somewhere that used to be called Atlantis. After all, this currently unnamed city was once above sea level, and then some earthquakes happened causing the land to subside, and the city sunk; people back then probably assumed it was "the work of the gods".

      • "[...]a mighty host, which, starting from a distant point in the Atlantic ocean, was insolently advancing to attack the whole of Europe, and Asia to boot. [...] there lay an island which was larger than Libya and Asia together; and it was possible for the travelers of that time to cross from it to the other islands, and from the islands to the whole of the continent over against them which encompasses that veritable ocean. [...]Now in this island of Atlantis there existed a confederation of kings, of great

        • Well we can see from Homer's telling of the Trojan War that we wasn't particularly accurate with details. In fact, I've been told that our modern obsession with realism and literal truth is actually a fairly recent development; back then, people didn't care for "true stories", they liked them embellished far beyond the limits of reality. Of course, while today we claim to like realism, looking at the way basic physics is handled in any Hollywood movie shows that we're all liars, unless you really believe

          • In fact, I've been told that our modern obsession with realism and literal truth is actually a fairly recent development; back then, people didn't care for "true stories", they liked them embellished far beyond the limits of reality.

            An important key to understanding Greek and Roman literature is that when an author reports a speech by a famous person, they aren't making the least effort to recount what was actually said; rather, they are constructing what they thought the person ought to have said on the occasion.

      • Re:In Before... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by RobinEggs ( 1453925 ) on Friday October 07, 2011 @06:54PM (#37644638)
        And then that guy proceeded to utterly ruin the city, smashing through all the upper layers without even pretending to analyze or catalogue them in search of the gold or whatever he expected to find at the bottom.

        I forget the exact details, but I know he trashed damn near 90% of the place; even by the looser standards of the 1800's he was a reckless, arrogant fuck. His own partner castigated him for his methods. It must have been inspirational for archeologists I suppose, to know that great things were still out there, but it quickly became one of the bigger archeological tragedies man has ever witnessed.
        • If you think Schliemann was bad, you should check out what Evans did to Knossos. He didn't just dig right through all the previous layers with wild abandon, he plastered over and repainted what he found until it was a sort of Disney recreation.

          • Consider what the British did to Indus Valley civilization cities:

            British engineers John and William Brunton were laying the East Indian Railway Company line connecting the cities of Karachi and Lahore. John wrote: "I was much exercised in my mind how we were to get ballast for the line of the railway." They were told of an ancient ruined city near the lines, called Brahminabad. Visiting the city, he found it full of hard well-burnt bricks, and "convinced that there was a grand quarry for the ballast I wan

      • People used to think the same thing about Troy.

        I don't think that's actually true. We've always had lots of Roman references to the historical city of Ilium on the site (Roman version of Greek Ilion, source of the epic's title Iliad), with what was always thought to be Achilles' tomb nearby. We've always had references to the fact that Alexander visited the tomb during historical times and swapped his shield for the one on display there. And we have a Fifth Century CE (IIRC) travelogue where a guy reports visiting the site and being astonished to find

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by C0R1D4N ( 970153 )
      It's not exactly far-fetched to say the story was based on an actual city that sank into the sea (*cough* Akrotiri *cough*). After all, modern story-tellers use historical events to make political points all the damn time.

      • It's not exactly far-fetched to say the story was based on an actual city that sank into the sea (*cough* Akrotiri *cough*). After all, modern story-tellers use historical events to make political points all the damn time.

        Perhaps it was, though if so it was more likely based on the famous circular harbor at Carthage than on Thera.

        But Plato introduces it in a fictional account of a dinner party where one of the characters reports that a friend of a friend of ... (insert 7-8 removes) heard it from an Egyptian priest. We know that these stories of Plato, called Dramatic Dialogues, are just fictions to let him insert his opinions into the mouth of Socrates. So maybe he did drop in some common (or esoteric) knowledge about an a

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rossdee ( 243626 )

      "Atlantis never existed."

      Next you'll be saying that Discovery and Endeavour never existed, (or Challenger and Columbia)

      Anyway one of the theories of the origin of the legend of Atlantis is that it recalls the Thera eruption which destroyed the Minoan civilistation around 1500 BC which was before 3000 years ago making that (the remnants of the Minoan city around Santorini) the oldest submerged city., or at least older than the one mentioned in the article. There are probably older sunken cities around, eithe

    • So was Troy until it was excavated.

    • Atlantis never existed. It was a rhetorical device.

      So was Troy, until someone dug it out.

  • The title lead me to believe that the Nightmare Corpse-City of R'lyeh had finally been brought to light through the use of your pitiful mortal computer-machines. You got my entire Eldritch Order excited for nothing, Slashdot. May the tainted stars blast you.

  • Not available in your Area... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Friday October 07, 2011 @06:42PM (#37644534) Homepage

    Tried to view the video on the BBC site. Says "not available in your area".
    The irony is that I am in Greece...
    Thanks BBC.

    • WhyTF does the BBC do this?

      • WhyTF does the BBC do this?

        So they can get paid at least twice for the TV show. Once from the Licence Fee (legally required of all UK citizens with a TV set), and then once more when they show it on BBC America, and then again when they sell it internationally.

        It's a nice racket, a nice way of earning money. No risk, no pressure to return on it.

        This also being the reason why they just got their budget cut by government, and had to fire 2000 staff (a very small percentage).

        • (legally required of all UK citizens with a TV set)

          Uh, no. You do *not* need a TV licence in the UK to own a television. You need it to watch off-air programming. Why you'd bother with that when things like bittorrent and really fast broadband exist, I don't know.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by DaveGod ( 703167 )

          The BBC cannot make a profit, due to the not-for-profit charter of the organisation it can only make periodic surpluses or deficits - over the long term they can only net off to nil. Any surplus generated on popular programmes is used to subsidise either/both the licence fee and/or unpopular but "culturally significant" or whatever programmes.

          I'm not really sure you have a solid grasp of the way media or any other duplicable asset is sold. Making a sale in many different ways is not the same as "being paid

      • Same reason ABC and NBC does it to people who dont live in the US. Because those people wont buy the stuff the commercials are selling so there's no point in spending money on the bandwidth.
    • I hear they have some marbles they won't let you have back either.

  • ... the Google Street View car.

  • What strikes me as odd is how much they look like average modern Mexican buildings. And many here in South Texas. wow 3000 years ago.

  • Since nobody mentioned 'the king must die' as yet, I will.
    Paai

  • That would belong to this city http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1768109.stm [bbc.co.uk] It was found in 2002

  • What about the submerged city in the Gulf of Cambay, India? This is reported as being up to 9000 years old (possibly) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1768109.stm

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