Ruined City Under Tunisia's Waters

Archaeologists discovered what they believe to be ruins of the Roman city of Neapolis — underwater near Tunisia. Find out more on BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Christian Sager here. Archaeologists recently discovered more than fifty acres
or twenty hectares of Roman ruins off the coast of
northeastern Tunisia. That's a small country on the northern tip
of Africa and situated on the Mediterranean Sea. The discovery

(00:24):
has researchers believing they may have finally found some convincing
evidence that the city of Neopolis, not to be confused
with the Italian city of the same name, that Neopolis
was wiped out by a natural disaster about a thousand,
six hundred and fifty years ago. In addition to streets
and monuments, researchers found about one hundred tanks that would

(00:47):
have been used to produce a garam that's a fish
based fermented condiment commonly consumed in ancient Rome. In an email,
How Stuff Works spoke to Carlos nor Ania, Associate professor
of history at the University of California, Berkeley. He says
that the discovery is important because it lends support to

(01:10):
the theory that Tunisia Neopolis was submerged by a tsunami
in the fourth century A d that's a useful reminder
that environmental catastrophe is not only a phenomenon of the
modern world. Scientists wrote in a study in the journal
Nature that a tsunami was caused by an earthquake that

(01:31):
occurred in three sixty five c e in Crete. There's
no surefire way to know the extent of the quake,
since measuring tools didn't exist at the time, but scientists
believe two separate tremors happened in succession, and the larger
one had a magnitude of eight point o on the
Richter scale. The resulting tsunami destroyed about fifty thousand homes

(01:54):
and killed approximately five thousand people in the city of Alexandria, Egypt.
And because the geological fault at the center of the
earthquake was located off the coast of Crete, that Greek
island was actually lifted up in certain areas by as
much as thirty three feet or ten meters. Historian Omnianus

(02:16):
Marcellinus recorded the event, and the newly found ruins reveal
that there's much more to the story. Norina says the
discovery also illuminates the economy of Roman North Africa and
provides further evidence for the popularity of garum in the
Roman diet. The detail is significant. Garam was a big
deal throughout the Roman Empire, and as Italian archaeologist Claudio

(02:40):
Giardino has told NPR, it played a major role in
the society's economy. He says that according to the Roman writers,
a good bottle of gerum could cost something like five
hundred dollars today, but that they also had garam for
slaves that was extremely cheap, so it is operable to
a modern amenity like wine, for instance. The underwater findings

(03:05):
of Neopolis and its abundant manufacturing materials indicate that the
city was a major historical hub. Neopolis, which means new
city in Greek, was originally founded in the fifth century
b c e. And various warring territories claimed ownership of
it throughout its history. Experts believe that because the city

(03:27):
failed to pledge allegiance to the Romans, there are very
few written records documenting the details of life there. That
means the new discovery is that much more important to
understanding the full history of the era. Today's episode was

(03:48):
written by Michelle Konstantinovski and produced by Tristan McNeil. For
more on this and other topics, please visit us at
how stuff works dot com.