Hasta La Ideas

In the early 1980s, Frenchman Franck Goddio was working in finance. But rather than searching for treasure in spreadsheets, he began looking elsewhere: underwater. With a passion for underwater archaeology, Goddio quit his finance gig, founded the Institut European d’Archeologies Sous-Marine, and started searching for shipwrecks.

His results were impressive. Goddio excavated Spanish galleons, trading ships from the British East India Company, and Napoleon Bonaparte’s flagship, among others. But it was an expedition he undertook in 2000 that really put him on the map, so to speak: He managed to locate Thonis-Heracleion, an ancient port city (built circa 800 B.C.!) that’s now completely submerged off the coast of Egypt. The hyphenated name hints at its cosmopolitan nature: The Egyptians called it Thonis, the Greeks, Heracleion after a massive temple to Heracles that once stood at the site.

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