Voyage to Atlantis
by Phoebe Adams
by Putnam, $6.95. Dr. Mavor, an oceanographer from Woods Hole, joined a long line of the platonically overstimulated when he took up the notion that Atlantis was really the island of Thera, partially destroyed by volcanic eruption around 1500 B.C. Dr. Mavor proposed to collect oceanographic equipment and check the sea bottom for lava strata, sunken ruins, and the like. Unfortunately, his project had to be catalogued as archaeology, which put the oceanographer beyond his depth. He ran into bewildering landlubbers: the residents of Thera, out of patience with foreign amateurs picking up relics and yelling for the closing of the pumice mines which are the island’s chief industry; the Greek archaeology service, quite properly determined to have the affair correctly managed; Dr. Spyridon Marinatos, who had been appointed head of that service in the wake of the colonels’ coup and who arrived trailing clouds of political complications. The short excavation established that Thera had indeed supported a sophisticated Minoan population, but much more work is needed on the site to establish its exact relation to Crete. Hoping to arouse financial support for further study, preferably marine, at Thera, Dr. Mavor rushed home and told the press all about it. He had the permission of Dr. Marinatos, who had already reported, in Athens, the spectacular finds on Thera, arousing no great excitement because spectacular finds are normal in Greece. But Dr. Mavor talked about Atlantis, and the island worked its evil magic on the reporters. Dr. Mavor (and, to her dismay, Emily Vermeule of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, who had been working for Marinatos at Thera) got international credit for rediscovering Atlantis. The Greeks were disgusted, and the business ended in ill temper, misunderstanding, and the revocation of certain permits to dig. Considering that the enterprise was a fiasco from Dr. Mavor’s point of view, his book reveals little rancor.