Nine Real Sunken Cities: Underwater Archaeology Reveals Baiae, Thonis-Heracleion, Pavlopetri, and More

Key facts

• Baiae, a Roman resort in Campania's Phlegraean Fields, was described by Seneca as a "resort of vice" and visited by Julius Caesar, Nero, Cicero, Virgil, and Pliny.
• Thonis-Heracleion, Egypt's main trading port founded around the 8th century BC, was submerged by the 8th century AD; Franck Goddio's IEASM expeditions since 2000 mapped its districts and found the Decree of Sais.
• Pavlopetri, surveyed in 1968 by the University of Cambridge after Nic Flemming's discovery, dates to the Neopalatial period (c. 1700-1425 BC), making it the world's oldest sunken city.
• Shicheng was deliberately flooded in 1958-1962 for the Xin'anjiang Dam, displacing about 300,000 people; its five gates and stone-lion archways were explored in 2001.
• Dwarka, linked to Krishna in the Mahabharata, yielded 9,000-year-old artifacts in a 2001 National Institute of Ocean Technology survey.
• Dunwich, a medieval port as large as London, was eroded by storms between the 1280s and 1320s; David Sear's 2008 sonar survey located its monastery and churches.
• Port Royal, Jamaica, sank on June 7, 1692, after an earthquake and tsunami killed 2,000 immediately; a brass watch stopped at 17 minutes to noon was recovered in 1959.
• Phanagoria, founded around 540 BC on the Taman Peninsula, sank in the 1st millennium AD; a marble gravestone for Hypsikrates confirmed ancient accounts of the Mithridates VI uprising.