(With people still living in it)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070724/sc_livescience/hiddencityfoundbeneathalexandria
Tue Jul 24, 4:45 PM ET
The legendary city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great as he swept through Egypt in his quest to conquer the known world.
Now scientists have discovered hidden underwater traces of a city that existed at Alexandria at least seven centuries before Alexander the Great arrived, findings hinted at in Homer's Odyssey and that could shed light on the ancient world.
Alexandria was founded in Egypt on the shores of the Mediterranean in 332 B.C. to immortalize Alexander the Great. The city was renowned for its library, once the largest in the world, as well as its lighthouse at the island of Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Alexandria was known to have developed from a settlement known as Rhakotis, or Râ-Kedet, vaguely alluded to as a modest fishing village of little significance by some historians. Seven rod-shaped samples of dirt gathered from the seafloor of Alexandria's harbor now suggest there may have been a flourishing urban center there as far back at 1000 B.C.
Coastal geoarchaeologist Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and his colleagues used vibrating hollow tubes to gently extract three-inch-wide rods of sediment 6 to 18 feet long (2 to 5.5 meters) from up to 20 feet (6.5 meters) underwater.
Collecting these samples underwater proved challenging. "Alexandria now is home to as many as 4 million people, and we were in the unfortunate position of having to deal with their discharge—human waste, municipal waste, industrial waste—which got released into the harbor," Stanley said. "It's not funny, but you have to sort of laugh."
Ceramic shards, high levels of lead that was likely used in construction, building stones imported from elsewhere in Egypt and organic material likely coming from sewage were detected in the sediment. These all suggest the presence of a significant settlement well before Alexander the Great came. The results are detailed in the August issue of the journal GSA Today.
"Alexandria was built on top of an existing, and perhaps quite important, settlement, maybe one that was minimized in importance because we can't see it now," Stanley told LiveScience. "Nothing really concrete about Rhakotis has been discovered until now."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070724/sc_livescience/hiddencityfoundbeneathalexandria
Tue Jul 24, 4:45 PM ET
The legendary city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander the Great as he swept through Egypt in his quest to conquer the known world.
Now scientists have discovered hidden underwater traces of a city that existed at Alexandria at least seven centuries before Alexander the Great arrived, findings hinted at in Homer's Odyssey and that could shed light on the ancient world.
Alexandria was founded in Egypt on the shores of the Mediterranean in 332 B.C. to immortalize Alexander the Great. The city was renowned for its library, once the largest in the world, as well as its lighthouse at the island of Pharos, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
Alexandria was known to have developed from a settlement known as Rhakotis, or Râ-Kedet, vaguely alluded to as a modest fishing village of little significance by some historians. Seven rod-shaped samples of dirt gathered from the seafloor of Alexandria's harbor now suggest there may have been a flourishing urban center there as far back at 1000 B.C.
Coastal geoarchaeologist Jean-Daniel Stanley of the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History and his colleagues used vibrating hollow tubes to gently extract three-inch-wide rods of sediment 6 to 18 feet long (2 to 5.5 meters) from up to 20 feet (6.5 meters) underwater.
Collecting these samples underwater proved challenging. "Alexandria now is home to as many as 4 million people, and we were in the unfortunate position of having to deal with their discharge—human waste, municipal waste, industrial waste—which got released into the harbor," Stanley said. "It's not funny, but you have to sort of laugh."
Ceramic shards, high levels of lead that was likely used in construction, building stones imported from elsewhere in Egypt and organic material likely coming from sewage were detected in the sediment. These all suggest the presence of a significant settlement well before Alexander the Great came. The results are detailed in the August issue of the journal GSA Today.
"Alexandria was built on top of an existing, and perhaps quite important, settlement, maybe one that was minimized in importance because we can't see it now," Stanley told LiveScience. "Nothing really concrete about Rhakotis has been discovered until now."
