A brief boat ride from the thrumming nightclubs of Mykonos lies the UNESCO heritage site of Delos, one of the most important sanctuaries of the ancient Greek and Roman world.
Surrounded by piercing azure waters, Delos’ 2,000-year-old buildings offer a microcosm of information on daily life during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.
However, the site known for its temples guarded by stone lions could be gone forever in half a century, scientists warn.
Photo: AFP
“Delos is condemned to disappear in around 50 years,” said Veronique Chankowski, head of the French archeological school of Athens, which has been excavating the site for the past 150 years under licence from the Greek state.
The tiny Aegean Sea island’s silent drama could not be more at odds with the bustle of neighboring Mykonos, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.
The worst structural damage is visible in an area that once housed trade and storage buildings in the first and second centuries BC and is not accessible to visitors.
“Water enters the stores in winter. It eats away at the base of the walls,” said Jean-Charles Moretti, the French mission’s director on Delos and a researcher at the French state institute for the research of ancient architecture.
“Every year in the spring, I notice that new walls have collapsed,” said Moretti, who has taken part in digs on the island for the past 40 years.
In the space of 10 years, the sea has encroached by up to 20m in some parts of the island, Chankowski said.
A study by Aristotelio University in Thessaloniki last year found that increasing temperatures combined with high levels of humidity can significantly affect the chemical composition of certain materials used in cultural heritage monuments.
“Just like the human body, monuments are built to withstand specific temperatures,” study supervisor Efstathia Tringa, a meteorology and climatology researcher at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, told the Kathimerini daily earlier this year.
A steady stream of tourists from Mykonos, who often veer away from permitted areas, constitute an additional problem.
In the summer, only a handful of archeologists are at hand to supervise.
To the ancient Greeks, Delos was the birthplace of Apollo, god of light, arts and healing, and of his sister Artemis, goddess of the hunt.
The siblings were among the chief deities of the Greeks and the Romans.
At the height of its acclaim during the Roman era, Delos attracted pilgrims and traders from across the ancient world and ultimately grew to a bustling city of about 30,000 people.
However, the island’s popularity proved its undoing. It was looted twice in the first century BC and eventually abandoned altogether.
For now, wooden support beams have been used to shore up some walls, Chankowski said.
However, more robust measures are complex and will require a multi-disciplinary response, she added.
“All coastal cities will lose significant areas currently located at sea level,” said Athena-Christiana Loupou, a Greek archeologist who guides groups through the site’s main attractions.
“We replaced plastic straws with paper straws, but we lost the war” to protect the environment, she said.
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS