The Atlantian System: Creation

As Leta was manhandling her duffle bag off the bus, she was beginning to think the saying “the journey is more important than the destination” was coined by an asshole who had a team of manservants carry their bags.

The muggy air of Athens was thick with car exhaust and the sound of typical city life mixed with random conversations by Greek strangers.

Her jaw cracked as she let out a long yawn, her eyes watering as she started trudging towards the museum. Her flight from Seattle to Frankfurt had been delayed by several hours due to an issue with the landing gear, causing her to miss her original flight and sleep uncomfortably on the airport terminal chairs.

She would have liked to have gotten in yesterday so she had time to recover from the jet lag, but she was just glade that she had stepped off that bus within walking distance to the museum where the rest of the archaeological team was about to meet.

“Leta!”

She heard her name shouted over the crowd and turned to see tall, handsome Vigo from New Zealand striding up to her with a wide smile on his face. “You made it.”

“So good to see you in person, Vigo!” She smiled, giving his cheeks a kiss in greeting.

“Did you just arrive?” He gave her a quizzical look, one brow raised on his tan face as he looked over her slightly wrinkled attire.

“Just stepped off the tarmac.” She shrugged, readjusting her bag as they headed towards the museum together. “My plane got delayed.”

“I almost didn’t make mine.” He chuckled. “My layover was in Singapore, and I stayed too long checking out the gardens.”

Leta smiled, hoping she didn’t seem too weird. She had met most of the team over a video conference call before the trip and had tried to be as mature and knowledgeable as possible so she didn’t come across as the nerdy teen fresh out of high school that they’d have to babysit.

Her British father had always said that she was ‘comely’ while her very American mother had labeled her ‘curvy’. Leta knew she wasn’t ugly, but a love of mac and cheese and years of her nose buried in books had given her the pudgy body and fat face.

She wasn’t some beauty that people gave a second look to.

That was okay with her.

She was here to do a job, not to date or catch anyone’s eye.

As long as she didn’t need to buy an extra seat on the airplane, she was happy with her looks and her lot in life.

“Are you excited?” Vigo asked, seeming sincere in his curiosity as they climbed the steps to the museum’s front entrance.

“Of course. I’ve had an interest in the Mesopotamian civilizations since I was a kid, so having a chance to be there for this kind of excavation is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” She smiled, unable to hide her giddiness when talking about her favorite subject, as she approached the front counter.

“Hello. We are here to see Dr. Marrow with the university’s archaeological team.” She said slowly, her Greek pronunciation showing that her only lessons in the language was from an app during her flight.

The receptionist called someone on the landline, and a moment later, a tall man of African heritage dressed smartly in a light blue collared shirt and slacks came out to meet them.

“Hello. I’m Dr. Simon De Mar, Assistant Curator of Mycenaean Antiquities. Welcome to the Athens Archaeological Museum,” he said with an accent that sounded like Moroccan but was tempered slightly with something else she couldn’t recognize. He smiled, giving them a slight bow of his head as he gestured for them to follow behind them. “Right this way, please.”

Leta looked around the museum as they headed for an employees-only door and felt a strange sense of being right at home.

“Have either of you visited Greece before?” Dr. De Mar asked over his shoulder.

“No,” Vigo answered.

“Yes. Years ago, I was with my parents on an excavation at the Library of Hadrian.” Leta responded distractedly, her eyes catching a glimpse of the Mycenaean exhibit before they headed in the back.

“Your parents are archaeologists?” He asked curiously as they meandered through less exciting back halls and offices.

“My mom is a professor, and my dad is a lecturer on geoarchaeology and paleoethnobotany at the University of Washington. My mom’s research focused on how ancient European and Asian cultures communicated in the last 5,000 years, so I grew up on these kinds of digs.”

“Is your mother Dr. Naomi Black? I believe I worked with her previously regarding a Roman tablet that had been found in Delos. It’s wonderful to see a young woman following her parents’ interests. And here we are.”

He opened a conference room door and ushered them inside. A large wooden table, the same as you would find in any major corporation, dominated the room around which sat over a dozen people encompassing a wide variety of ages and ethnicities.

At the head were two women in their mid-forties. One was short with long braided brown hair streaked with grays and kind brown eyes behind thick-rimmed glasses. The other was tall and statuesque, her once blonde hair had turned mostly white, though her face was still very youthful. Her hazel eyes were sharp as she took in the newcomers.

She recognized the tall woman, whose hard stare had melted into a smile upon seeing her. “Leta, good to see you got in on time. You’re mom has been blowing up my phone since you left.” Dr. Annika Galloise smiled at her.

“I’m so sorry, my flight got delayed.”

The professor waived her off, saying, “Just glad you made it. Take a seat. Vigo Thompson, good to see you, dear.”

Leta turned to Dr. Marrow, who gave her a warm, almost motherly smile. The woman was the definition of a petite, scholarly lady. She was in her early sixties with wavy, dark brown hair that was mostly gray by now and piled on her head in a bun. brown eyes twinkled behind half-moon wire glasses, her pale weathered skin standing out against her modest forest green dress.

“Lovely to meet you, Leta.” Dr. Marrow greeted her with a polite handshake. “I think you were maybe ten when I last saw you. Your father helped me identify seeds that were found in a jar at Herculaneum.”

Leta greeted the team and took a seat next to Pilar Flores, a Columbian student focusing on ancient maritime trade, and Chandi Jadhav, an Indian student from the Punjabi region with a focus on ancient stonework.

The last to arrive was Captain Vasilis, the owner of a deep-sea salvage company that would be assisting on the site. He was a large, rotund man who looked exactly like what Leta would think when she thought of an old Greek sailor: gray hair, a hard stare, and enough chest and arm hair that he could be mistaken for a polar bear from a distance. He was dressed in a thin maritime shirt, cargo shorts, and old tennis shoes and smelled of wax and oil as if he had just been working on his ship before he arrived.

“Are we all here?” Dr. Marrow asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Right, let’s begin.”

She turned down the lights in the room and used a remote to flip on an overhead projector that lit up an aerial map of Santorini and its surrounding waters.

“Just a recap from what we discussed during our video call a few weeks ago: the site was originally discovered last year after a cyclone disturbed the underwater seabed and revealed structures. It’s taken a bit to survey the site, but as of this year, everything is in order so that we can move forward with excavating the site.”

She tapped the remote, and the map zoomed in to a small set of three islands over 15 kilometers southwest of Santorini, and below those, an ‘X’ was placed in what looked like the middle of the ocean.

“Our site is located three kilometers south of the Christiana Islands, just over 30 meters below the surface, with an elevation change of about five meters. It is located on a stretch of volcanic rock that was probably above the surface and connected to the nearby islands at one point in time.”

The image on the screen flipped to the survey sketch of the site, a mix of sonar, satellite, and other scans layered on top of each other and overplayed with a grid. “Surveys have currently put the site at just a little over half a square kilometer, but that is expected to grow as we uncover more.”

Dr. Galloise stepped forward and said, “The site is broken out into separate areas.” An image popped up on the screen with thick colored lines corralling around raised edges in the sand. “The main courtyard is in yellow, the inner courtyard is in light blue, the reception room is in red, private rooms are in orange, storage is in green, the elevated quarters are in white, and the unknown section is in black. This is the most decayed section, so we do not have this part defined yet.”

The colorized sections faded to black and white except for a small section of the northernmost wall that was orange. “The previous team began excavating the northwest wall of the site, which had private rooms and went one meter into the site. We will be continuing the excavation of the north wall to the south side, still one meter into the site.”

The image on the screen blinked away to pictures of the site taken underwater by the survey team, showing the sand-covered outline of a buried metropolis. It clicked again to show the progress the first team had made on the northern wall, as they revealed once smooth walls that had been weathered by time and the elements before flipping to small items found around the walls.

Dr. De Mar stood up as pieces of pottery and small sections of cuniform tablets came on the screen.

“The items that have been recovered so far estimate this complex to have been in use around 2500 BCE. However, the layout of the site indicates that it is much older than that, with construction taking place sometime between 3500 and 2000 BCE. There are a lot of questions around this site, as you all are aware. What is the Mesopotamian-era complex doing in the middle of the Sea of Crete? Why was it here? What was it used for? We cannot answer these questions if we are not careful. I know everyone here has been on a dig at least once before, but please remember that this is an incredibly fragile site and to be conscious of your surroundings.”

“Which brings us to the obstacles we are facing with this.” Dr. Galloise added, crossing her arms as she surveyed the room. “One, the dive site is situated four kilometers between two ferry lines west and southeast, so be prepared for that. Second, there is a current in that area that is pushing west towards the busier ferry line, so if something goes loose, it may float that way. Third, this site sits just south of the volcanic Christiana Islands. They are uninhabited and will attract all kinds of wildlife, so keep this in mind during the dive. Vasilis, would you please talk about the boat and dive procedures?”

“Good morning.” Vasilis greeted everyone with a thick Greek accent. “Forecasts show no storms in our immediate future, but we are expecting to have easterly winds on some days that may make conditions impossible for diving. I will be monitoring the weather and sea conditions and will be in communication with Dr. Marrow and Dr. Galloise on whether it is safe to be at the site before we depart. Please remember, that it is roughly 24 kilometers, or just over twelve nautical miles, from the site to the shore. We will have first aid kits on the boat, but if you are seriously injured, it could take an hour to get you to a hospital.”

Vasilis reiterated basic scuba procedures, which were a requirement to be certified for this dig. He talked about the light at that depth, the clarity of the water, and some of the wildlife that they could expect to see before nodding to Dr. Galloise.

“What comes next is straightforward.” She intoned. “We have seats booked on the ferry to Santorini tomorrow morning at 7:25. You will be at the docks at 6 a.m. Remember, this is peak tourist season, and there will be a lot of us, so be on time. Also, it’s an eight-hour journey, so make sure to pack your go-bag accordingly. Once we arrive in Santorini, we will be getting to our hotel in Fira. You are welcome to go get dinner, but please be aware that breakfast is at 4 a.m. with a debrief by the outgoing team at 4:30. We will be leaving immediately after to head for the boat to be over the site at sunrise. Are there any questions?”

Seeing none, she nodded. “Right. Get some rest, people. We’ve got a long journey ahead of us tomorrow.