Results tagged “Archaeology” from Intelligent Travel Blog

Fact-checking Andrew McCarthy's upcoming January/February feature, "The Three Faces of Rome," got me thinking about the Eternal City's 2,000-year past, layer upon dusty layer of it.

Currently, only two metro lines serve the city of 2.5 million. A third, set to open in 2015, has unearthed archaeological artifacts (like the Dionysos head, unearthed near Via Sannio, Rome, above), many which will be exhibited in the stations themselves. What else has been unearthed by metros around the world?

Here are some highlights I found in my research:

• In Athens, when the city expanded its metro to accommodate the 2004 Olympics, 30,000 artifacts were found scattered beneath 17 acres.

• During construction, a 11th or 13th-century shipwreck was discovered at Yenikapi, what had been a harbor in Byzantine Istanbul.

• Approximately 2,000 fossils (mastodon, camel, ground sloth) dating back 16.5 million years were located way beneath the surface of Los Angeles.

• Construction of Line 14 of the Paris metro unearthed canoe-shaped boats 32 feet below the banks of the Seine, dating to about 2,800-2,500 B.C., hinting at what may be the earliest human settlement in the area.

•  At what is now Pino Suárez station in Mexico City, an Aztec temple was found in the 1990s and is displayed in the passageway between lines 1 and 2.
  

Fifteen years ago, a recently-graduated British archaeologist decided to walk 2,000 miles across Turkey, following a section of Alexander the Great's ancient path from Troy to Iskenderun (with a heavy backpack and plenty of stops at ruins and ancient battle sites along the way).

Sound crazy?

Well, maybe a little. But it seems to have worked out, because right now Peter Sommer (the aforementioned archaeologist and Alexander the Great enthusiast) is embarking on yet another tour that hits many of the same highlights he explored back in 1994. These days, however, he is paid to do it.

Sommer runs Peter Sommer Travels, which offers expert-led tours throughout Turkey and Greece. Given the background of the tour guides (historians and archaeologists - many with PhDs), the tours are certainly educational, but there is also plenty of time for fun, relaxation, and eating wonderful Turkish meals...oh, and did I mention that the tours get from one place to the next on hand-built gulets?

"We tend to cruise for about three to four hours per day, with stops in idyllic coves for swimming, snorkeling, or something more physical like kayaking or windsurfing," says Sommer. "We normally visit one ancient city per day, usually in the late afternoon, when the heat of the day has passed. That's when our specialist guides bring the ruins and the history to life."

So, basically, sail through paradise, then let an expert tell you stories of past civilizations while you stand on the ground where history was made. I'm sold!

A variety of tours are offered spring through fall. Check out www.petersommer.com for more details. And stay tuned for more amazing and enriching tours in the May/June issue of Traveler.

Photo courtesy of Peter Sommer Travels

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

One of the benefits of having traveled throughout Africa for the last two months is that it has kept us in an information void for some extended stretches at time (Carol fondly refers to this as being in our little bubble). We did manage to watch Barack Obama being sworn in just a couple hours after we toured a township in South Africa, and I was able to retrieve sporadic e-mails in the bush from friends and family raving about how lucky we were to be on this trip while filling us in on the happenings from back home.  And it seems like every correspondence we've received has made some sort of reference to the lousy economy and how ominous the mood is in the U.S. I'm quick to reply that the places we've been to are feeling it too, proving that there's truth to the saying that when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches a cold.

From what we've experienced, I can attest that one sector deeply affected by the global financial crisis has been the travel industry. This was evident from all the empty hotel rooms and sparse crowds we'd seen in recent weeks. Although it's true that countries like South Africa, Kenya, and especially Zimbabwe have been impacted by social unrest and political instability, the economic slowdown has clearly compounded the fact that traffic is down as much as 60% in some places.  

One country that didn't seem as affected was Egypt. If they've lost business as a result of people cutting back on vacation spending, it was hard to notice. The same seems true for Jordan, which found us in full planes and sold-out hotels for our excursion to Petra. Maybe not as many Americans are there as formerly, but the usual mix of German, French and Japanese tourists appeared well represented. We also heard plenty of Indian, Russian and Chinese accents, and from what we can gather, travelers from these emerging countries might be compensating for any drop off from our part of the world.