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We were charmed by this townswoman, who let us take her photo on the front porch of her stucco house in Skalani, a small village in Crete. It's one of my all-time favorite shots. We were invited into the house of a nearby neighbor who had never before seen an American.
Phalasarna is an ancient Greek harbor town on the northwest coast of Crete. Because ancient writers rarely mentioned the site, its history is known virtually entirely from archaeology. A learned observer (Captain T. A. B. Spratt, of the Royal Navy), noted in 1859 that the former harbor of the deserted site was now 200 yards from the sea and that the ancient sea coast must have risen at least twenty four feet. Modern excavation has confirmed this judgment. Radiocarbon dating of fossil algae along the ancient sea level mark on the cliffs around Phalasarna estimates the sudden sea level change at some time more than sixteen centuries ago. A very probable event was the great earthquake and tsunami of 21 July A.D. 365, which wreaked catastrophic damage on all the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean and was recorded by dozens of ancient Greek and Roman writers. But four centuries previously Phalasarna had already been destroyed by the hand of man. The city was a notorious pirate refuge and when in 68-67 BCE the Romans sent forces to eliminate piracy from the eastern Mediterranean they stormed Phalasarna, blocked its harbor with massive masonry, and relocated the inhabitants. No ancient sources testify to these events, but evidence of burning and the harbor blockaage itself suggest the tentative conclusions of the excavators, Elpida Hadjidaki and Frank Frost, of the University of California, Santa Barbara