Ancient `Wave of Poseidon` was real tsunami, geologist says
Baku, April 20 (AZERTAC). When the ocean rose up and saved a Greek town from a marauding Persian army nearly 1,500 years ago, renowned Greek historian Herodotus chalked it up to an act of the gods.
Yet new evidence suggests his account of divine intervention is firmly rooted in the earthly realm, and was actually a tsunami, according to a researcher who spoke here Thursday at the annual meeting of the Seismological Society of America.
"This is historical stuff, but you have to interpret it in a scientific way," said Klaus Reicherter of Germany`s Aachen University, who studied geological evidence of the event.
Some 50 years after the 479 B.C. event, Herodotus wrote his account. "There came to be a great ebb of the sea backwards, which lasted for a long time," he wrote.
As the sea rolled back before them, the Persians surged forward toward modern-day Kassandra, a peninsula in northern Greece, to finish a town now called Nea Potidea. But before the invaders could reach dry land, their good luck turned sour.
"Then there came upon them a great flood-tide of the sea, higher than ever before, as the natives of the place say, though high tides come often," Herodotus wrote. The Persians were washed away and the town was saved.
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