I'm John Batsford. This is the Friends of History Debating Society with Charles

Pellegrino, our guide like Virgil, taking us into Hades and then we'll climb to

Paradise. We now go to the Mediterranean Basin about the 17th century BCE. In

other words approximately 3700 years ago, similar to the event of the Dead Sea.

But this time it is an island that disappears. You can find this in several of

Charlie's books but return to Saddam Gamora features this. Charlie today this

island is called Santorini. What was there 3700 years ago? Today there's

these ribs of fractured island at Santorini that surround this circular

lagoon that's eight miles across. About 1620 BC, about 1650 BC, you would have

seen where that tremendous beautiful lagoon is. It would have been a volcano

rising about a mile above the center of the lagoon. They had a lot of nice

good rainy weather, a lot of forest land. Species of shrew that grew up to

about the size of a sheep dog and apparently many elephants also lived on

some of these islands. The elephants were about as big as the giant shrews.

And you had on Santorini and the excavation is now a lot of it open to the

public. Beautifully displayed. You see a city, the 1650s BC and you see part of

this whole city they had multi-story buildings that were earthquake

resistance built into them. Very high technology for the time. Great hydro

technology. Even toilets. Flush toilets on the upper on the second floor of one

of the homes and baths and running water in the homes. Beautiful artwork in

the homes and the Egyptians knew these people as the kept you and they even had

outpost in Egypt and they didn't dominate in Egypt by weaponry or anything or

...