Cyclops of Peloponnese

Another 'Greek' vacation came to an end after we chose to take and risk a little, probably the longest drive toward the ancient civilization cradle in the history of all of our summer vacations. Driving in a row for 14 hours was not exactly as fun as expected, but in the end, when I put all the 'pros' and 'cons' together after a couple of years of planning and anticipating our first visit to the famous Peloponnese, it was worth the wait. But before a story about sites we visited, I'd like to share some thoughts about the journey itself. This year it was the weakest link of our entire vacation, and little 'pros' can be taken out of it. First of all, it was too long, and with 40+ degrees Celsius outside, it was far from being pleasurable and relaxing. If you add to the 'cons' list too many moments with driving poor roads and unnecessary waiting time on borders and tolls, especially within the transiting country of Macedonia (FYROM), I am not far from the decision that next time we will be choosing a different route for the travel to Greece and most likely booking the plane instead or, for smaller trips, checking out the new highway the European Union is currently building in Bulgaria.

Fortunately, all the 'cons' ended with the journey alone, and all the good mood and perfect vacation spirit recovered fast as soon as all the 'pros' overcame in days of one full week of our second vacation south from Greek Macedonia and our first visit to the Greek capital, its municipality area, the Corinth Canal, and ancient Peloponnese.

Perhaps the most exciting time we spent during the first couple of days was filming the remaining scenes for our short film "Game of Life" (embedded below), which we were playing with all summer long. It all started pretty benign and just like another father-son playtime, but somehow it evolved into a real project with a decent storyline, filming scenes on four major locations, and also using chroma keying technology with a green background for dialogues. With the last scene taken in Greece, we now have 90+ video files in total. Anyhow, this was one of our best plays so far, and we both enjoyed it very much with all the bloopers and improvisation. Most importantly, this film would not be possible without a lighthouse, as it plays a major role in the story, and we found it just 20 kilometers from our hotel with tremendous views of the entire Corinthian Gulf. We spent three days on the site and nearby beach and finished all the 'Greek' scenes. In the above photo, Viktor, with our 'nerf' portal stone preps, is posing in front of 'Faros Melagavi', built on the rock near the 'Vouliagmenis' lake where we filmed the last portal scene and also just next to the ancient archaeological site of 'Heraion of Perachora'—a sanctuary occupied by a real oracle, just like the one in Delphi, dedicated to the goddess Hera and built in the 9th century BC. Here, just next to the old ruins of the temple of Hera, I found a stone perfect for a green screen scene we already filmed in our living room 'studio' and more or less successfully merged it into the film's main dialog.

In a way, we were, sort of, pioneers in exploring Corinthian vacations from Serbia. This was actually only the second year for travel agency "Balkan Fun" to organize a stay in Loutraki, a seaside resort located in the Gulf of Corinth and just a couple of kilometers from the western exit of the Corinth Canal. It is actually a thermal spa center known from ancient times with natural water springs with multiple healing abilities. If you bought bottled water in Greece anytime in the past, the chances are that some of them are from Loutraki Spa. We stayed in the hotel 'Mon Repos', a very nice old hotel with a genuine 'Otis' elevator from the middle of the previous century. If you watched 'Kate and Leopold', you probably know what I mean. The town is not perfect for families per se; the beach is not sandy and wide, and deep water comes very soon from the rocky part, but if you are in your twenties, with the famous hotel Casino and numerous nightclubs, you are in the right place. If you are older and with small kids, don't forget to come here with the car so you can be able, like we did, to explore the neighborhood.

Anyways, we chose to come here with 'Balkan Fun', not only because they were the only agency offering Loutraki for the fair prices, but also because of their numerous bus excursions to Athens and the Peloponnese. Anja Bačanin, our travel guide, did a perfect job organizing the tour, and with her 'radio host' voice in decent buses, she perfectly provided all the information needed. I admired her for her ability to tell a story with thousands of years of ancient times perfectly wrapped into just five or ten minutes. Not all travel guides can do that, and with these words, this is our thanks for all her efforts during our stay and especially for the two excursions we shared with the group.

And from two excursions on the Greek mainland, one was a visit to the ancient Acropolis of Athens, which was one unforgettable day. Especially for me, as this was my second visit to the site, with the first one being when I was younger than my son today. I still have a scanned image of me in the Acropolis some 40+ years ago, and all my efforts to find the same amphora where my old photo was taken failed, probably due to the fact that a new museum opened in the foothills of the site since then and all small artifacts are probably moved there. Still a couple of 'déjà vu' memories triggered in my mind, especially at the gate. Too many years passed, I guess—I was perhaps 3 or 4 years old, and it is not easy to remember things from that distance in time. I am still happy I experienced a couple of flashes of familiarities and resemblances.

The second excursion was named 'Discovering Peloponnese', and it widely justified its name. To be honest, quietly I was all in for this vacation this year, just because of this trip and especially for a chance to visit the Mycenae fortress. Within the second millennium of BC, Mycenae was one of the major and only centers of Greek civilization, and if you ask me, all the ancient Greek times later, including 'Classical Greece', which flourished for a couple of hundredyears and started somewhere in the 5th century BC, have to thank their origin in Mycenae. It was populated all the way from Neolithic times, ever since probably the last ice age, but the most prosperous times were around 1350 BC, at its peak when the entire site was built in a famous Cyclopean masonry style with massive limestone boulders and no use of mortar of any kind. In Greek mythology, Cyclops, the one-eyed giants, supposedly lived before the last ice age and, in ancient times, were the only ones capable of lifting stones, and some of them we saw on site were larger than two meters in height and probably weighed tons. Well, if you ask me, the Cyclop builders in this and any other case were probably elephants, strong horses, and "expendable" slaves, but still, the ingenuity of the old masons never disappoints. Their ingenuousness and beautiful museum with alien-like artifacts are something I will remember for a long time.

The peak of Mycenae dated just a couple of centuries after the devastating volcanic eruption of Thera, or the well-known Minoan eruption of the island today known as Santorini. I wrote more about it in the posts Aegean Sea and Atlanteans, but in a nutshell, there is a theory that survivors of the old Minoan civilization (Atlanteans?) or at least some of their ancestors, after the eruption, came here and founded Mycenae in the first place or mixed with natives. Artifacts found that resemble Minoan deities are one of the pieces of evidence that it might be true, along with similarities in the written language used. That's the history and scientific hypotheses, but as far as mythology says, Mycenae is founded by legendary Perseus, a demigod, the son of the ultimate god Zeus and mortal woman Danaë, daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. If you didn't see "Clash of the Titans" and "Wrath of the Titans" with Perseus played by Sam Worthington, go ahead and "rent" them; they were not that bad movies at all, despite all my reservations, and best of all, the script of the second movie offers the answer to the ultimate question of how and why gods from Olympus ended their presence on Earth.

Of course, the excursion was not only about the ancient Greeks—we were privileged to visit the Corinth Canal itself, the legendary sanctuary of Epidaurus with an amazing amphitheater, probably bigger than the one in the ancient Hierapolis of Pamukkale in present-day Turkey, and most of all, the old capital city of Greece—Nafplio, an amazing city with a colorful history that one time in the middle ages was ruled by the Republic of Venice. It was the capital of the First Hellenic Republic and of the Kingdom of Greece in the early 19th century, and its mixed architecture is still visible today. Viktor and I visited their small and wonderful war museum that is hosting many items and stories about the last millennium, including a model of the Venetian warship from the time.

Sometimes I wonder if one lifetime is enough to visit all of Greece and its ancient and modern sites and cities. Probably not. One thing is for sure. More summers are waiting ahead.

Anyway, this vacation gave us lots of knowledge and experience, and I am sure with this year there are fewer and fewer sites still waiting to be explored and seen. Aside from a couple of Aegean islands still on my to-do list, regarding Peloponnese, I still have a couple of regrets, especially if I think of Sparta and ancient Olympia. Speaking of Sparta, what we didn't miss and stopped to see during our journey was the "ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ" monument, next to the highway and old site where the famous battle of Thermopylae happened. Leonidas I, as I wrote in the posts Fishermen and Pirates of Evia and Warfare Then and Now, led a small army to defend Greece from Persian invasion in August 480 BC. He failed to defend Greece from Xerxes' large army at Thermopylae, but even today, after 2500 years, his bravery will be remembered as the greatest last-stand battle ever recorded. Not to mention the movie and famous line "This is Sparta", which is not only artistically perfect but also not too far distant from the facts as well.

ps.

I rarely publish on the blog personal photos that are not ours, especially not selfies, but this post deserves an exception. The following image is made by Anja, our guide. Great colors and style. Well made. I mean it. We are somewhere in the picture, and not just us; behind the group to the left is my backpack, which I accidentally forgot to bring with me, and coincidentally, where it stands is the exact spot where the first image from this post was taken.

As for the rest of the images in the post, this time I chose to include only selected photos that are following the story, but there are more, and all of them are in the album named, well, you probably guessed, Cyclops of Peloponnese. Needless to say, I recommend the entire destination, travel agency, and all the excursions.

Image refs:
https://goo.gl/photos/rLdZuPdaApQTCv5N8

Refs:
http://www.visitloutraki.com/
http://www.nafplio.gr/en/sightsmenu/stateandprivatemuseums/warmuseum.html
http://www.fungroup.rs/
https://www.facebook.com/anja.bacanin

Atlanteans

If I am going to give a thought or two about ancient Atlantis, its mysterious people, and all the conspiracy theories behind it, there is no doubt that I'll first think of the origin of the story. Classical Greece and Plato. One of the most famous scholars from BC. In his own time, Plato was definitely the top Greek philosopher from ancient Athens, who lived in the fourth century before Christ and dedicated his entire scholarly life to philosophical research and development of modern society and politics. The method he used in his publications was dialogues, a very popular way of expressing scientific thoughts at the time. Plato's dialogues, in which he never took the role as one of the participants, were often the front story accompanied with narration, but in some of them he even excluded the narrator and presented his work in pure novel style, with his characters carrying the story all the way.

In regard to today's title, two dialogues are especially interesting—Timaeus and Critias. Participants in the dialogues were Socrates, Timaeus, Hermocrates, and Critias, and Plato tried to describe the perfect society time-framed way back before the old Classical Greece. In short, these two dialogues describe a tale from a man called Solon, another Athenian, who, during his travels throughout ancient Egypt, learned about mysterious people who lived and perished many generations before. Twenty years or so before these dialogues, Plato had written his masterpiece "The Republic", in which he discussed what he thought of an ideal state with a 'just man' and the meaning of justice in general from the point of view of Greek cities from the classical time. His ideal state was named 'Ancient Athens', placed in existence 9000 years before Plato's time (or 900 if the suggested error in translation is true), and governed with a superior and almost utopian society. As it seems, Atlanteans are used in Plato's books just as an example of how even the enemy that was so powerful, beyond any current comprehension, is incapable of defeating a perfectly regulated society. After that the story went wild, and Atlanteans, who tried to enslave the entire Mediterranean, were easily defeated by 'utopian' and perfectly organized Athenians. In the aftermath, their superb armada retreated to their island, and the gods in their final rage destroyed the entire Atlantean civilization, which Plato described in his famous words, "There occurred violent earthquakes and floods, and in a single day and night of misfortune, the island of Atlantis disappeared into the depths of the sea." In the second dialogue, "Critias", Plato described in more detail the origin of the 'ancient' Atlanteans, with extensive use of old Greek mythology, as Poseidon's heaven, who created a perfect society that ultimately, over time, started to fade out as soon as they started losing their divine origin and got overwhelmed in corruption.

Today, we have great knowledge about ancient Greek times, and so far there are no scientific facts in favor of "ancient of the ancient" Greek society that is older than 3 millenniums BC, who fought mighty civilizations that came from the other side of the Pillars of Hercules and both vanished without a single trace. However, there is a faint clue and tons of theories of where Plato really found inspiration for this incredible tale.

Reconstruction of a late Cycladic Ship (© 7reasons, Michael Klein)*

As for the faint clue, I would vote for the ancient Minoan civilization and their predecessors, who preceded the Greeks in the Aegean and suffered ultimate decimation from both natural disaster and human invaders. They lived on the island of Crete within the ancient settlements of Knossos and Gortyn and also on the northern Aegean island of Thera (Santorini) in the ancient site of Akrotiri, which, just like Roman Pompeii, is remarkably preserved after the tremendous volcanic eruption. Their civilization flourished in the late Bronze Age and, like in Plato's words, within a single day and night, around the year 1600 BC, disappeared into the sea in one of the most powerful volcanic eruptions in the history of the entire world. What is today known as 'The Minoan eruption of Thera', seismologists tend to classify as four times more powerful than the well-known explosion of Krakatoa. If Minoans had more settlements in the neighborhood, which was likely, they were all destroyed and sunk during the natural reshaping of the archipelago. A massive eruption, no doubt, created a large tsunami wave that probably reached all the way to Crete and ultimately decimated the Minoan people in the northern part of the island. In the following years, pirates and thieves from the sea and land took the chance and made sure for Minoans to never recover to what they once were.

Well, in conclusion and after this small history glimpse, if you ask me, there is a fair chance that Plato's Atlanteans are truly based on ancient Minoans. After all, 2300+ years ago, in Plato's time, the world wasn't big, and the entire cradle of the civilization, as we popularly call Greek Classical times, was small and all about the Aegean Sea. Even the Mediterranean was too large for wooden galleys and far travels. Ancient Minoans came to the Aegean two millennia before Plato, and after their misfortune, I am sure the legends and myths about them grew slightly above the facts. Still, their language, clay tablets, art, pottery, architecture, and overall history prove they once were a very respectful and organized society.

There is no doubt that Atlanteans from Plato's 'Timaeus and Critias' served just a supporting role in this piece of philosophy, but still, ever since, the Atlantis story has had a large impact on literature, comic books, and movies. They are used in tons of novels and portrayed as an insanely advanced civilization with all the technological wonders, perfect cities, flying ships, state-of-the-art armory, etc. There is no bay or gulf in the Mediterranean Sea and Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Caribbean that some rich adventurer or scholar didn't try to find the Atlantean ruins or at least to post a new theory of the Atlantis site or a conspiracy theory of some sort. To be honest, I am really ok with that—if you look at it from the entertainment point of view, what you get is very much fun, and if you read it on the beach, it surely adds another level to your vacation time.

This is exactly what I did this summer, and during our ten days of R&R on Thassos Island of the northern Aegean, I loaded all three books of The Origin Mystery on my Kindle and swallowed them all in record time. Honestly, from this trilogy I expected a lot, and this is exactly what I got! You have to be brave to make yet another novel about Atlanteans, and A.G. Riddle wrapped it just right. He managed to connect several sci-fi genres into one successful story. For my taste all the sciences are there and connected perfectly. Biology, virology, genetic research including junk-DNA involvement, physics and space travel, quantum entanglement, Antarctica, known history, and the use of connection and conspiracy theories like the Nazi bell (Die Glocke) or the Roswell UFO sighting. Play with time dilation and hibernation. Space battles of enormous proportion. Explanation of gods and ancient astronauts. If you add the usual 'Indiana Jones' type of adventures and romance, there was no better choice for me this July. Perhaps, using so many connected sciences in the plot is too risky, as the author faces the challenge of choosing what is more important and deserves to be explained better at the expense of other technologies or speculations, but I don't mind. All in all, Riddle's Atlanteans are perhaps the best version I've read in a long while, and I warmly recommend it.

Reconstruction of the Akrotiri Supervolcano (© 7reasons, Michael Klein)*

As for the real Atlanteans, or in this case ancient Minoans, I hope some of next summer will lead us to the southern Aegean, and then this story will earn another post in the thread. No doubt with images from ancient Akrotiri. In the meantime, don't miss the below link with incredible scientific reconstructions from before the Minoan Eruption made by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archeology (LBI ArchPro).

Image credit:
* The Akrotiri Supervolcano (© 7reasons, Michael Klein)