Entombed by a 30-foot layer of volcanic pumice for more than 3,500 years, the city was clearly related to the ruins of Minoan Crete. Hundreds if not thousands of years ahead of its time, among the city's ruins was evidence of complex drainage systems, showers, flushing toilets, even hot and cold running water. Here too, were exquisite wall paintings, their rich colors preserved by the centuries of confinement, their subject matter unlike anything previously discovered in the region.

We look at the frescos and we see very free flowing, beautiful art. And it's made scholars think of them as gentle people, people without any violence in them, we find that the cities and palaces on Crete are not fortified, so again we get this vision of a, sort of Utopian society.

Clearly the Minoans have been an exceptional and artistic people, far ahead of their contemporaries in many fields, but were they really the Atlanteans of legend? There were both many similarities and many differences between Plato's story of Atlantis and the discoveries on Santorini and Crete. Like the Atlanteans, the Minoans had been in contact with the earliest Greeks as well as the Egyptians. But the Minoans disappeared from history near 900-9,000 years before Plato's time. And even though only a fraction of the city of Acroteria has been excavated, so far, it bears little resemblance to the city of Atlantis described by Plato. It is certainly nowhere near the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Academic opinion remains divided.

What Marinatos has found was very important, he was able to produce evidence which could form the base for at least part of the story of Atlantis. Maybe not the whole thing, but part of it. And that was the crucial thing.

There's no comparison whatsoever between the Minoans and the Atlanteans. The Minoans had a high level of culture, but nothing extraordinary. It was a very open society, and they had an empire but it was run by a fleet, none of which seems to fit the description of Atlantis at all.

Nevertheless, there's one group of people who stick firmly to the belief that Santorini was Atlantis, the islanders themselves.

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entomb: v. 埋葬
exquisite: adj. 优美的
fresco: n. 壁画
fortify: v. 加强
islander: 岛上居民