remains of the temple of Apollo, but the site will require further 

 investigation before this can be confirmed. 



Today there are many small groups of divers scattered around 

 the Mediterranean working the remains of the submerged villages 

 and villas that can be found on every coast. In the next few years 

 the emphasis will probably be on the development of a detailed 

 over-all picture of these coastal settlements and their relations to 

 one another. 



Of the large sites still to be tackled it is doubtful that any of 

 those involving the removal of thousands of tons of mud and silt 

 will be excavated in the near future, if ever. Unless there is a very 

 strong reason to beHeve that finds of extreme artistic, architectural, 

 or historical importance can be made, it would not be worth spend- 

 ing the enormous amount of money that would be needed to 

 uncover a city or port that might turn out to be Uttle more than a 

 duplicate of one we already know about. Thus HeUke and Epidau- 

 rus will probably he forever beneath the mud. So far as cities are 

 concerned, the great pioneering days seem to be over. 



With ships the situation is diflFerent. Although Egyptian and 

 Roman trading vessels have been studied in some detail, we still 

 know practically nothing about ships of the Minoan, Mycenaean, 

 and Phoenician civilizations, nor of the warships of any period. We 

 have already seen that it is not worth excavating every wreck that 

 is found, but there are still so many gaps in the story of classical 

 shipping that some dramatic excavations may be undertaken in the 

 next few years. If a Greek warship were found in the mud of 

 Syracuse harbor, or a Minoan trading vessel in four hundred feet 

 of water off the coast of Crete or Turkey, then the enormous 

 expense of excavation would be justified. With the new techniques 

 of deep diving which are now under development — Cousteau's 

 plunging saucer, and Keller's new gas mixtures and decompression 

 tables - it is becoming possible to investigate a wreck below three 

 hundred feet. But if, as is quite likely, these new methods are taken 

 over by the miUtary authorities and classified as secret, it will be 

 many years before civiUan diving reaps any benefit from them. 



There is yet another branch of submarine archaeology that we 

 have not mentioned at all - the study of caves. Although Uttle has 

 yet been done in this line, my own hope is to find signs of human 

 occupation in caves down to depths of 150 feet or more. A cave 

 at a depth of a hundred feet below present sea level would have 

 been high and dry from 70,000 B.C. to 18,000 B.C. and could easily 

 have been inhabited during that period. The prospect of excavating 

 submerged cave dwelHngs, and thereby linking the archaeological 

 periods of the stone ages with the eustatic changes of sea level, is 

 one of the most exciting possibiUties of the near future. 



After talking about submerged cities of the past, it is difficult 

 to resist the temptation of making prophecies about our present 

 coastal cities, such as London and New York. London has, in fact, 

 been subsiding gently since Roman times. However, while it is 

 impossible to say whether the next big eustatic change will be up 

 or down, we have no reason to beheve that the sea should remain 

 at its present level indefinitely, and changes of a hundred feet up 

 or down would be equally awkward. In any case, a change of this 

 order would take three thousand or so years, so that we can com- 

 fort ourselves that it will not occur in our Hfetime. 



This bronze head of a wild boar decorated 

 the prow of a Greek ship 2000 years ago. 

 Before its discovery the oniy evidence of the 

 shape of Greel< warship prows was to be found 

 on vase paintings, lil<e the one above. 



171 



