THE flourishing Minoan civilisation on Crete in the Aegean Sea came to a sudden end 3500 years ago, and archaeologists have long struggled to work out why. The latest theory is that it was all down to an interruption in the water supply.
The Minoans lived a civilised existence. Their palaces were of the finest architecture, and housed beautiful artwork and even the first example of a flushing toilet. Various events have been suggested as the reason they fled, including earthquakes, climate change and the eruption of the nearby Santorini volcano with a resulting tsunami, but none of them seemed quite enough on their own. Now Yuri Gorokhovich, a geologist at Columbia University in New York, is suggesting that the spate of earthquakes on Crete around 1700 BC were responsible 鈥� but in a manner no one had previously considered.
Perched high on limestone ridges, the Minoan palaces such as Knossos and Phaistos have always been an enigma to archaeologists. Their sophisticated drainage system clearly indicates a culture that was heavily dependent upon water, yet today there is no water source nearby. This puzzled Gorokhovich when he visited these sites, but after suffering a burst water pipe at home he began to wonder if a sudden cut in the water supply could have forced the Minoans out. 鈥淲e were without water for three days and it was a disaster,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f it caused us such a big problem, what might it have been like if it had happened to the Minoans?鈥�
Advertisement
It occurred to him that earthquakes have the potential to divert water supplies, and he began to search for examples where this is known to have happened. From California and Pennsylvania to India and Japan, he discovered that many communities have been left without water when an earthquake re-routed the water supply. 鈥淎fter the Pymatuning earthquake in Pennsylvania [in 1998] about 40 per cent of the aquifers never returned,鈥� Gorokhovich says.
He believes that the multiple earthquakes that occurred on Crete around the time the civilisation died could have repeatedly interrupted the water supply and explain why geologists cannot find sources of water near the palaces today. 鈥淔or the Minoans it would have been a big deal to have to keep making new wells, and eventually they were forced to leave,鈥� he says.
