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team discovered ruins of Classical buildings, which turned out to be the remains of the city of Helike destroyed by the earthquake of 373 B.C. The location of the ruins lay almost half a mile inland, which explains why no one had found them beneath the sea. Analyses of the microscopic organisms preserved in the layer of fine dark clay covering the buildings revealed that the site had been drowned by a shallow inland lagoon, which had subsequently silted up. The discovery of sea shells and the possible remains of seaweed on the site are evidence that Helike's ruins were probably at one time beneath the sea.

© Dr. A. Siokou

The Helike Delta and the Gulf of Corinth.

The remains of one Classical building graphically illustrated the fate of the city. One of its walls had collapsed in a seaward direction, clear evidence to support destruction by the backwash of a giant wave. Amongst finds of demolished walls, pottery fragments, and terracotta idols, the excavators found a mint silver coin with a representation of Apollo wearing a laurel wreath, cast in the neighboring town of Sikyon a few decades before the earthquake struck. The sad fate of this once great Classical city is thought by many to have been the inspiration for the legend of Atlantis, first recorded by Athenian philosopher Plato a few years after the Helike earthquake, in 360 B.C. A BBC Horizon documentary Helike- The Real Atlantis, made in 2002, makes this claim for the site.

The area around ancient Helike is one of the most seismically active in Europe, and at least 4,000 years of

ancient settlements on the site have flourished and been destroyed by earthquakes. So it is hardly surprising that the ancient city was the center of a cult dedicated to Poseidon, the god of earthquakes. In August 1817, an earthquake preceded by a sudden explosion destroyed five villages in the place where Helike once stood. In 1861, 8 miles of coastline sunk about 6 feet, and a 597 foot wide coastal belt of coast was submerged beneath the waves. In June 1995, while the Helike Project team were working in the area, an earthquake of 6.2 on the Richter scale struck, killing 10 people in the adjacent town of Aigion, and demolishing a hotel in modern Eliki, killing 16.

Dr. Steven Soter collected many descriptions of odd events preceding this quake, which have overtones of the ancient accounts of the earthquake that destroyed Helike. People heard fierce winds when the air was still outside, dogs howled unaccountably, there were subterranean explosions, strange lights in the sky, and fireballs. Huge numbers of octopuses were seen by local fishermen and, the night before the earthquake, numerous dead mice were found on the road, all of which had been run over by cars while trying to make their escape into the mountains. These incidents are reminiscent of the behavior of animals in the 2004 tsunami that struck Sri Lanka, southern India, and Thailand, caused by a huge 9.15 Richter earthquake in the Indian Ocean. In Sri Lanka, where tens of thousands of people lost their lives, animals appear to have fled inland before the tsunami struck. Even though the tsunami caused a heavy loss of human life in the area of Yala National Park, Sri Lanka's biggest wildlife reserve, no dead animals were found. Experts believe that animals possess a sixth sense with which they sense a natural disaster. This is certainly suggested by their behavior before the Helike earthquakes.

© Dr. A. Siokou

The plain of Helike, looking towards the mountains.

One of the most significant finds from the Helike excavations was of paving stones from what was probably a Classical road. The archaeologists from the Helike Project now hope that following this road will lead them nearer to the heart of the ancient site. However, in terms of finding more complete remains of the Classical city, there is the important question of whether such an immensely destructive tsunami would have left anything behind for the archaeologists to find. Nevertheless, the team from the Helike Project are confident that a major part of the city will still be located. Someone who would certainly have supported this belief was the late Spyridon Marinatos, discoverer of the prehistoric town of Akrotiri on the Greek island of Santorini. One of the earliest modern searchers for the lost city, Marinatos once speculated that hoards of bronze and marble Classical sculptures could lay entombed in the ruins of the city, and fully expected the discovery of an ancient town surpassing even the archaeological riches of Pompeii.

Apart from the constant danger of further earthquakes in the area, the Helike Project now faces a further threat to the site. In Roman times, a road running from Corinth to the city of Patras passed through Helike. Traces of this road have been found in excavations. Recently, the Greek National Railway began laying a new rail line which will connect Athens with Patras. Trains are currently operating on this railway as far as Corinth, and the line is expected to reach Patras by 2010. At the moment, the route of this rail line is scheduled to run right through the center of the ancient site, probably in the next two or three years. Thus, the remains of ancient Helike will be destroyed before excavations have had the chance

to uncover what would surely be priceless evidence of life in prehistoric and Classical Greece.

In order to help protect this important archaeological site from destruction by the railway, the World Monuments Fund has included Helike in its List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. But land along the coast in the region where the Project plans to excavate is being developed quickly, and Dora Katsonopoulou has appealed to the Greek Ministry of Culture to make the area an archaeological zone where new construction is forbidden. Unfortunately, at present, the Greek Archaeological Service and the Greek Ministry of Culture have not acknowledged the importance of the site. Hopefully, the significance of the