8 Things To Do Before Your City Sinks

As part of Underwater Archaeologist Franck Goddio’s Dive
  Team, I get to spend a lot of time wandering around sunken Egyptian
cities.


And while excavating the location of Cleopatra’s Palace,
or the great temple at Canopus that disappeared in cataclysmic events
thousands of years after the beginnings of history, and yet more than a thousand years before now, my mind sometimes wonders to the inevitable question,
when will it happen next?

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With all the talk these days of oceans rising from
climate change, and the fact that my own house in Key  West is just 8 feet
above sea level, it seems irresponsible not to give the subject some
thought.

If the British had taken this statistically predictable
  phenomenon into account when building Port  Royal, Jamaica, they might have been less
surprised when, one afternoon in 1692, the whole town sank. And its not like we
haven’t been exposed to tales from antiquity giving us a heads-up. Atlantis, anyone? Noah?

But hey, we have to live in the here and now, don’t we?
We cant go missing out on all those sunset views just because our Condo complex
  Might fall in the sea. Im just suggesting that if you, our estate, or some  future civilization is going to come
looking for your submerged stuff, here are a few tips that seam to work. 

1. Build
   with brick and mortar. It is very rare to find any construction materials
   left after a period of time inundated. Exception; some of the towns flooded
   by damming rivers remain entirely intact, and are popular pleasure diving
   spots. Old Jyndabyne Township, New
   South Wales,Australia, flooded by a dam
   project mid 1900's.Boasts many rock and brick buildings but the best is the
   Ford truck still in the garage.


2. Don’t
   build on a sand bar. Port Royal was
   constructed on sand 60 feet deep, that “liquefied” during an earthquake
   sending the buildings falling through a foundation while it disappeared
   beneath them into the bottom of the Port.


3. Bury
   your valuables, and put in some I.D.: Archaeological divers are always
   finding jewelry and coins laying around on the sea floor, at the mercy of
   tides and storms. No way of knowing whose they were! Ceramics, on the other
   hand, often bear the signature of the individual that made them, or their
   owner, like Nestor’s famous drinking Cup.


4. Relocate
   important things to Higher Ground, Like the Government! Alexander the
   Great probably recognized that the Import/Export Capitol of Egypt was built
   on the Nile Delta, composed of nothing but layers of sand and silt piled up
   in the Mediterranean sea. In the thousands
   of years of occupation by the Pharaoh’s, there was probably already history
   pointing out what would inevitably happen. So he moved the entire city to
   higher ground, and built on bedrock. It was such a good idea, he named it
   after himself.


5. Don’t
   move to another place that’s going to sink. In 300 bc Newly built Alexandria was a marvel
   to behold, and the military and port infrastructure were built down at the
   sea for obvious purposes. Unfortunately the Royal Quarters, location of the
   RoyalPalace of the Ptolemy’s, and Mark
   Antony’s ‘Timonium” were there as well. 600 years later, kershploosh. Into
   the briny deep.


6. Leave
   Direction Elsewhere. If you do decide to keep your city where it will
   inevitably, on a geological time scale, end up on the bottom of the sea, you
   or your estate might want to go back after the cataclysm and try to relocate
   things. Do everyone a favor and leave some directions to where your city
   Used to Be. When Heracleion sank, it took every local geological reference
   point with it.


7. Try to
   avoid areas where other people will also be loosing historically important
   things, Like an entire Fleet of Ships. When Admiral Horatio Nelson destroyed
   and sank Napoleon Bonaparte’s Mediterranean Fleet at the Battle of the Nile, he
   did it right where a Pharaonic city had gone missing.


8. Leave
   a Sturdy Marker. Once Goddio and team had excavated all the wrecks from the
   battle of the Nile, the search could start
   in earnest for a city that had disappeared into history, Heracleion, or
   Thonis, had been written about extensively by ancient geographers, and
   Homer. So when Goddio found the evidence of a city off the coast of
   Egypt, he had a problem few
   archaeologists encounter, how do you know which missing city it is?
   Fortunately, it wasn’t long before he found a beautiful Stele in black
   granite that stated, more or less, “Welcome to Heracleion ( please pay your
   10 percent tax on all goods)”.

 copyright 2012 
Erric Waretenweiler Smith