Akrotiri

This guide to Akrotiri in Santorini opens with a number that should not be possible: zero human skeletons found in a Bronze Age town buried whole under volcanic ash. It follows the earthquakes that rattled the streets before the eruption around 1620 BCE, the rubble its residents cleared and then abandoned, and the single gold figurine left behind by someone who never returned for it. Archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos began excavating here in 1967, certain a lost civilization lay beneath the ash, and spent the rest of his life on this site.