Greek city of Thasos on Island in
the Thracian Sea -
Silver Stater 22mm (8.6 grams) Struck 510-490 B.C.
Reference: Sear 1357 (₤400 in 1975 edition) -
Naked ithyphallic satyr in kneeling-running attitude
right, carrying in his arms a struggling nymph who
raises her right hand in protest.
Rough quadripartite incuse square.
A rich and fertile island off the
southern coast of Thrace, Thasos possessed prolific gold
mines and had a controlling interest in many silver
mines on the main-land.
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Thasos or Thassos (Greek:
Θάσος) is a
Greek island in the northern
Aegean Sea, close to the coast of
Thrace and the plain of the river
Nestos but geographically part of
Macedonia. And it is where Clive Cussler novel "The
Mediterranean Caper" takes place.
History
Prehistory
Lying close to the coast of Eastern Macedonia, Thasos
was inhabited from the Palaeolithic period onwards[1],
but the earliest settlement to have been explored in
detail is that at Limenaria where Middle and Late
Neolithic remains have been found which relate closely
to those of the Drama Plain. In contrast, the remains of
the Early Bronze Age on the island align it with the
culture which developed in the Cylcades and Sporades to
the south in the Aegean. At Skala Sotiros[2]
for example, a small settlement was encircled by a
strongly built defensive wall. Even earlier activity is
demonstrated by the presence of large pieces of
'megalithic' anthropomorphic stelai built into these
walls which, so far, have no parallels in the Aegean
area.
There is then a gap in the archaeological record
until the end of the Bronze Age c 1100 BC, when the
first burials took place at the large cemetery of Kastri
in the interior of the island.[3]
Here built tombs covered with small mound of earth were
typical until the end of the Iron Age. In the earliest
tombs were a small number of locally imitated
Mycenaean pottery vessels, but the majority of the
hand-made pottery with incised decoration reflects
connections eastwards with Thrace and beyond.
Antiquity
The island was colonized at an early date by
Phoenicians, attracted probably by its gold mines;
they founded a temple to the god
Melqart, whom the
Greeks identified as
"Tyrian Heracles", and whose cult was merged with
Heracles in the course of the island's Hellenization.[4]
The temple still existed in the time of
Herodotus.[5]
An
eponymous Thasos, son of Phoenix (or of Agenor, as
Pausanias reported) was said to have been the leader of
the Phoenicians, and to have given his name to the
island.
In either 720 or 708 BC, Thasos received a
Greek colony from
Paros. It was in a war which the
Parian colonists waged with the Saians, a Thracian
tribe, that the poet
Archilochus threw away his shield. The Greeks
extended their power to the mainland, where they owned
gold mines which were even more valuable than those on
the island. From these sources the Thasians drew great
wealth, their annual revenues amounting to 200 or even
300 talents. Herodotus, who visited Thasos, says that
the best mines on the island were those which had been
opened by the Phoenicians on the east side of the island
facing
Samothrace.
Thasos was important during the
Ionian Revolt against Persia. After the capture of
Miletus (494 BC)
Histiaeus, the
Ionian leader, laid siege. The attack failed, but,
warned by the danger, the Thasians employed their
revenues to build war ships and strengthen their
fortifications. This excited the suspicions of the
Persians, and
Darius compelled them to surrender their ships and
pull down their walls. After the defeat of
Xerxes the Thasians joined the Delian confederacy;
but afterwards, on account of a difference about the
mines and marts on the mainland, they revolted.
The Athenians defeated them by sea, and, after a
siege that lasted more than two years, took the capital,
Thasos, probably in 463 BC, and compelled the Thasians
to destroy their walls, surrender their ships, pay an
indemnity and an annual contribution (in 449 BC this was
21 talents, from 445 BC about 30 talents), and resign
their possessions on the mainland. In 411 BC, at the
time of the oligarchical revolution at Athens, Thasos
again revolted from Athens and received a Lacedaemonian
governor; but in 407 BC the partisans of Lacedaemon were
expelled, and the Athenians under
Thrasybulus were admitted.
Roman
Era
After the
Battle of Aegospotami (405 BC), Thasos again fell
into the hands of the
Lacedaemonians under
Lysander who formed a decarchy there; but the
Athenians must have recovered it, for it formed one of
the subjects of dispute between them and
Philip II of Macedonia. In the embroilment between
Philip III of Macedonia and the Romans, Thasos
submitted to Philip, but received its freedom at the
hands of the Romans after the
battle of Cynoscephalae (197 BC), and it was still a
"free" state in the time of
Pliny.
It is related, that Byzantine Greek Saint
Joannicius the Great in one of his miracles freed
the island of Thasos from a multitude of snakes
(Venerable Joannicius lived through 8-9 centuries).
Ottoman
Era
Thasos was part of the
Eastern Roman Empire, later known as
Byzantine Empire. It was captured by the
Turks in 1462. Under the Turks the island was known
as
Ottoman Turkish: طاشوز Taşöz. A brief revolt
against Ottoman rule in 1821, led by Hajiyorgis Metaxas,
failed. The island was given by the Sultan
Mahmud II to
Muhammad Ali of Egypt of as a personal fiefdom in
the late 1820s, as a reward for Egyptian intervention in
the
War of Greek Independence (which failed to prevent
the creation of the modern Greek state). Egyptian rule
was relatively benign (by some accounts Muhammad Ali had
either been born or spent his infancy on Thasos) and the
island became prosperous, until 1908, when the New Turk
regime asserted
Turkish control. It had the status of a
sanjak in the
vilayet of Salonici until the
Balkan Wars. On October 20, 1912 during the
First Balkan War, a Greek naval detachment claimed
Thasos as part of
Greece, which it has remained since.
World
War II
During Axis occupation (1941-1944) Thasos, along with
the rest of
Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, was under Bulgarian
control. The Bulgarians planned to annex the territory
under their control and closed down schools as a first
step towards forced
Bulgarization. Under Bulgarian rule the island was
called
Bulgarian: Тасос.
Mountainous terrain facilitated small-scale resistance
activity. The
Greek Civil War affected the island in the form of
skirmishes and
Communist guerilla attacks until 1950, almost a year
after the main hostilities were over on the
mainland.
Modern
Era
Thasos in 1950's
Church in Thasos
Thasos, the capital (now informally known as Limenas,
or "the port"), stood on the north side of the island,
and had two harbors. Archilochus described Thasos as "an
ass's backbone crowned with wild wood," and the
description still suits the mountainous island with its
forests of fir and pine. Besides its gold mines, the
wine, nuts and marble of Thasos were well known in
antiquity. Thasian wine (a light bodied wine with a
characteristic apple scent) was, in particular, quite
famous; to the point where all Thasian coins carried the
head of the wine god
Dionysos on one side and bunches of grape of the
other.
[6]
Today, Thasos is a part of the
Kavala prefecture and is the southernmost and the
easternmost points in the prefecture. Under local
government reform in the late 1990s, the entire island
became a single municipality. Thasos is served ferry
routes to and from
Kavala and Keramoti. The latter is a port at the
eastern portion of the prefecture, close to
Kavala International Airport, and has the shortest
possible crossing to the island.
Geography
Thasos from space, April 1993
Thasos has generally round shape, without deep bays
and significant peninsulas. The highest peak, Ypsario or
Ipsario, is 1,205 m (3428 ft) high and lies in the
eastern half of the island, which is steeper and mostly
covered in pine forest. The western half has gentler
slopes. While generally mountainous, the terrain is not
particularly rugged, as it rises gradually from the
coast towards the island center.
Most villages were placed inland, as the population
was chiefly engaged in agriculture and stockbreeding.
Those villages had their harbors at nearest points on
the shore, often connected with stairways ("Skalas") and
the population gradually migrated there, as tourism
began to emerge as an important source of income. Thus,
there are several pairs of villages such as Marion–Skala
Maries, where the former is inland and the latter on the
coast.
Geology
Geological and Metallogenic map of Thasos
Island.
Thasos island is located in the northern Aegean sea
approximately 7 km from the mainland and 20 km
south-east of
Kavala. The Island is formed mainly by
gneisses,
schists and
marbles of the
Rhodope Massif. Marble sequences, corresponding to
the
Falacron Marbles intercalated by schists and
gneisses, are up to 500m thick and are separated from
the underlying gneisses by a transition zone about 300 m
thick termed the T-zone consisting of alternances of
dolomitic and calcitic marbles intercalated by schists
and gneisses.
The rocks have undergone several periods of regional
metamorphism, to at least upper
amphibolite facies, and there was a subsequent phase
of retrograde metamorphism. At least three periods of
regional deformation have been identified, the most
important being large scale
isoclinal folding with axes aligned north-west. The
T-zone is deformed and is interpreted by some authors as
a regional thrust of pre-major folding age. There are
two major high angle fault systems aligned north-west
and north-east respectively. A large low-angle thrust
cuts the gneiss, schist and marble sequence at the
south-west corner of the island, probably indicating an
overthrusting of the Serbomacedonian Massif onto the
Rodope Massif.
The Late Miocene oil-producing Nestos-Prinos basin is
located between Thassos island and the mainland. The
floor of the basin is around 1,500 m deep off the
Thassos coast(South Kavala ridge; Proedrou, 1988) and up
to 4.000-5.000 m in the axial sector between Thassos and
the mainland. The basin is filled with Late
Miocene-Pliocene sediments, including ubiquitously
repeated evaporite layers of rock salt and
anhydrite-dolomite which alternate with sandstones,
conglomerates, black shales, and
uraniferous coal measures (Proedrou, 1979, 1988;
Taupitz, 1985). Stratigraphically equivalent rocks on
the mainland are clastic sediments with coal beds,
marine to brackish fluvial units and travertines.
Mining
history
Mining activities for base and precious metals
started in the 7th century B.C. with the Phoenicians,
followed in the 4th century by the Greeks and then the
Romans. The mining was both open - pit and underground,
and concentrated on the numerous
karst hosted calamine deposits for lead and silver
although there was also minor exploitation of gold and
copper. Worth mentioning is the discovery of a
paleolithic addit located at Tzines iron mine, whose age
has being estimated at approximately 15.000 years old, (Kovkouli
et al. 1988) for the exploitation of
limonitic ochre.
Economy
The main agricultural production on the island are
honey and
olive oil as well as
wine,
sheep,
goat herding and fishing. Other industries includes
lumber and tourism. Mining industry includes lead, zinc
and marble, especially in the Panagia area where one of
the mountains near the Thracian Sea has a large marble
quarry. Now abandoned marble quarry in the south (in the
area of Aliki) has been mined during the ancient times.
By far the most important economic activity is tourism.
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