A long - lose Roman urban center has been found in the weewee of northeast Tunisia , along with dozens of ancient Pisces sauce container , confirming the old theory that the colony was swallowed up by a stupendous tsunami 1,600 twelvemonth ago .
A new archeological labor by the Tunisian National Heritage Institute and the University of Sassari has sent divers to search this sunken urban center . So far they have reveal the remains of street , monuments , and around 100 tank car used to store garum , a fermented Pisces saucesometimes called“Rome ’s cetchup ” .
" This breakthrough has allow us to establish with foregone conclusion that Neapolis was a major center for the manufacturing of garum and salt fish , believably the bombastic center in the Roman world , " Mounir Fantar , who heads the Tunisian - Italian archaeological mission that made the discovery , toldAFP News Agency .
The name of the ancient city , “ Neapolis ” , means “ new city ” in Greek . There are a fistful of towns called this around the former Roman Empire but this one was near the modern - day coastal town of Nabeul in Tunisia , a short hop over the Mediterranean Sea from what is now Italy .
Fantar and his squad had been depend for the port of Neapolis since 2010 , convert that the city ’s clay , rumored to have been swallowed by a recorded tsunami in 365 CE , could be find out . The stiff of the urban center be as ruination includinghouses , an industrial building complex , and rather pretty paved mosaic . Thanks to this young discovery , archaeologists can now confirm approximately one - third of the urban area was submerged and remains submerged .
" It ’s a major find , " Fantar confirmed .
On the morning of July 21 , 365 CE , the Eastern Mediterranean was rocked by an underwater earthquake with a order of magnitude of 8.5 M – that ’s pretty damn potent . The epicentre was in Crete , where most of the towns were destroyed , but big portions of Greece , Cyprus , Sicily , Spain , and North Africa also suffered .
“ Many ships were stranded on the dry shore,”wrotethe Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus . “In another fourth the waves , as if tease against the violence with which they had been driven back , arise , and swelling over the boiling shallow , beat upon the islands and the extended glide of the mainland , leveling cities and star sign wherever they encountered them . ”
By the sound of that , it ’s not surprising this coastal city ended up underwater .
