https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/9484037/tiny-island-may-be-origin-of-ancient-greece/

ELBOW GREECE

Tiny 'pyramid island' may be origin of Ancient Greek civilisation – who once covered it in 10,000 TONS of white marble

• Charlotte Edwards, Digital Technology and Science Reporter

• 11 Jul 2019, 12:30
• Updated: 11 Jul 2019, 13:41

ARCHAEOLOGISTS think they may have discovered the origin of the Ancient Greek Empire and it's a tiny pyramid shaped island off the coast of Keros in Greece.

Excavations on the islet of Daskalio have revealed the earliest Ancient Greek monumental buildings ever unearthed, dating back 4,600 years.

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This tiny island could have started an empire that has impacted the entire world

The pyramid island is only 150 metres in diameter and may also have inspired the concept in the ancient Greek religion that mountain tops are where gods lived.

The discovery of the vast monumental complex on the tiny island is now totally changing what archaeologists thought they knew about this time period.

Research is being carried out there by a multinational team, supported by the Greek government and the British School in Athens as well as many other international institutions.

They have found evidence of metal shops, indoor plumbing and marble buildings on the island, all indicating that this is where the sophisticated society could have started.

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The island would have been covered in large marble buidlingsCredit: Getty - Contributor

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Experts think it was designed to look like a pyramid with lots of terracesCredit: Cambridge Keros Project

It is thought that the ancient people who lived on the island deliberately made it into a pyramid shape.

Some of the buildings found have two floors and fancy marble staircases.

In fact, the archaeologists think it would have taken at least 3,500 maritime voyages to transport between 7,000 and 10,000 tons of marble to the island so that the intricate buildings could be made.

This huge scale of work suggests the people were living in a powerful and unified state.

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Lots of artefacts have been found on the islandCredit: Badisches Landesmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany

The project's co-director Michael Boyd told the Independent: "Our investigation has been transforming our understanding of early Bronze Age Cycladic culture and suggests that these very early Greeks were organisationally, technically and politically much more advanced than previously thought."

The island could have been the start of the major trend of pyramid building across the world as it's a similar age to Stonehenge and earliest pyramids in Egypt.

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Building all the marble structures would have involved huge imports and lots of skilled workersCredit: Getty - Contributor

Dr Alan Peatfield of University College Dublin's School of Archaeology, a renowned expert on Greek mountaintop sanctuaries told the Daily Star: "It is potentially a fundamental place of origin for the phenomenon of sacred mountains within the Greek world."

Archaeologists have also found lots of knives, tools and small sculptures on the island and will be doing more investigating.

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