Ancient scientist guessed that Greek peninsula was once an island

Scientists recently put an ancient Greek geographer's theory to the test. They took samples from a peninsula near Athens called Piraeus, and found that this area had once been an island, just as the Greek scientist Strabo hypothesized in the 1st century BC. There are a few ways he could have guessed this: the name of the area, Piraeus, means "on the other side"; traces of the original layout of the land may have been visible from a certain vantage point; or Athenian oral tradition may have passed the information down.

I find the last a little unlikely, given that the area had last been an island 2,000 years before Strabo's time, and Athens did not become a real city (which might be necessary for a coherent oral tradition) until 1,400 years before his time. But most oral traditions cannot be traced back to their starting points with any certainty. The Greek epic tradition, for example, shares certain phrases (such as "undying fame," in Greek kleos aphthiton) with Sanskrit, but it is difficult to know how much else may be borrowed from Sanskrit epic or even if the two traditions have some common origin. Probably the most easy to read book on this issue is Albert Lord's classic The Singer of Tales. That the new edition comes with a CD of  modern oral traditional epics is an added bonus.



H/T arstechnica, 80beats Pin It