Port of Athens Was Once an Island, French-Greek Team Finds

Piraeus, the main port of Athens, was an island from 4 800 -- 3 400 BC, in other words 4 500 years before the Parthenon was built on the Acropolis. This discovery was made by a French-Greek team (1) led by Jean-Philippe Goiran, a CNRS researcher at the 'Archéorient -- Environnements et Sociétés de l'Orient Ancien' Unit (CNRS/Université Lyon 2), who studied and dated sediments collected in the Piraeus area. The research was carried out in collaboration with colleagues from the Universities of Athens, Paris 1 and Paris Ouest, and is published in the June 2011 issue of the journal Geology.   link