The Submerged Nabataean Temple in Puteoli at Pozzuoli, Italy | Hacker News Reader

The Submerged Nabataean Temple in Puteoli at Pozzuoli, Italy

cambridge.org

87 pointsaguaviva32 comments

You can't pick up a rock in Italy without technically disturbing an ancient ruin of some kind. It's unsurprising that this might be the case right off the coast too. Still amazing to look at when the water is clear in aerial pictures.

As an aside, historical preservation was used as a pretext for artificial housing supply restrictions in Europe much earlier than in the US. Eventually US property owners caught on. Now any old 20th century box is revered like a Haussmannian mansion in Paris.

Here in Pisa a decade or so ago the town started building an underground parking almost in front of the train station. The work had to be stopped soon because they found ancient Roman ships beneath the ground, that sank during a storm. After (many) years a museum with these ships opened and the underground parking works could start again, but it took literally years. The museum is small but quite cool tho, but you have to be passionate about it

Someone told me (years ago) that any building area in Manhattan must first be screened for Native American burial remains before any work could begin. Not sure if that’s true tho!

That seems reasonable doesn’t it? Once it’s gone it’s gone.

We have areas like that here in New Zealand.

https://hamilton.govt.nz/property-rates-and-building/distric...

In southwest Dublin City, you more or less can’t do anything without hitting Viking stuff. Hence, for instance, this: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/aungier-street-lidl-arch...

Probably the world’s only discount supermarket with a built-in museum.

Due to heavy construction in the last decade, there is apparently now a shortage of archaeologists; if you find something while excavating, you’re going to need one.

It makes sense to preserve history, old or less old that is. In pisa I can think of at least two restaurants/cafes that have a partial glass floor with remains of what was there during medieval age

I honestly prefer this to the American version, "The governor owns a bunch of real estate that would benefit more from road upgrades than two major rail projects that have been in the works for decades, so he tries to cancel the latter - succeeding with one, delaying the other by 5 years, funneling state funds to Induced DemandLand, and forefeiting hundreds of millions of dollars in free federal grants."

If you're in Maryland, please vote Alsobrooks for Senate.

You speak as if this is just an American issue. If you voted for the railway, whichever governor leads that charge will be part owner in the construction company, the rail company, and the law firm that defends them. And the only reason you'd know that it was possible to vote for him is because the rail company paid for his campaign.

That's business as usual everywhere in the world.

One powerful man's corruption is at least understandable, albeit not excusable.

I find it harder to put up with when entire neighborhoods successfully lobby for that kind of crap to the detriment of an entire region and then play it off as though it's some sort of win. What really makes my blood boil is when they so thoroughly market their accomplishments like it's some sort of win that their narrative becomes the prevailing narrative.

I find that people who are vocal about such stuff fall into extremes. I guess that's true of extremes in general. They tend to be the noisiest. (The converse isn't necessarily true, of course.)

On the one hand, you have NIMBYs who will block good development for arbitrary and self-destructive reasons, or selfishly support such measures, as long as they're in other neighborhoods.

On the other hand, you have people who redefine "NIMBY" to mean "things I don't like" and use it as a bludgeon to bully and intimidate. So, if a neighborhood doesn't want a loud outdoor concert venue built in the middle of it, then people from other neighborhoods who want the concern venue will call those who refuse in the neighborhood in question NIMBYs. This is ironic, given that they themselves are behaving exactly like NIMBYs: build the concert venue, but not in my backyard!

To you first point: that’s one reason why I believe the "there was ancient super civilization before but got completely eradicated" theories don’t make a lot of sense.

> You can't pick up a rock in Italy without technically ...

reminded me of a trattoria in Lecce, where the new owner just wanted to fix the toilet plumbing before its grand opening, but discovered a tomb from a Greek tribe, the remnants of a Franciscan chapel, etchings from the Knights Templar, and a Roman granary.

Who knows, it could've been the best trattoria in all of Italy, but it's another museum now.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/museo-faggiano

That’s a fascinating story, but your framing is perplexing—if it hadn’t become a museum it would have been yet another restaurant and presumably the man was compensated such that he could still have opened his restaurant in another building if he chose? Maybe you meant it humorously and I just missed the joke?

perhaps it's possible to combine the two things and have a historical themed trattoria-museum ?

The good news is that this is the final outcome, basically. While the original site did become a museum, the owner bought a building next door and opened up a trattoria there (albeit almost twenty years after starting the dig). https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20190807-a-trattoria-with...

"Who knows, maybe...."

Indicates a joke frame.

Same in Greece too

The sea level has risen 410 feet since the last glacial maximum. There are likely hundreds of submerged settlements around Europe and the Mediterranean.

Despite the enormous popularity of Petra the Nabateans are still a bit of a mysterious corner of the ancient world. This Italian temple sort of binds them to the "known universe".

It is also an interesting example of so-called political risk: your business fortunes being tied too closely to the whims of a State.

> The edification of the sanctuary was possible when the Nabataeans enjoyed the freedom and opportunities offered by the friendship with Rome and the independence of their motherland. In this golden age, from the time of Augustus to that of Trajan (AD 98–117), the Nabataeans accumulated an enormous wealth

but then...

> the trade routes were absorbed into a general network controlled by the State, with very little space for the initiatives of a people no longer independent

>> The downsizing of Nabataeans’ trade and the end of their small monopoly are perhaps the simplest explanations for the end of the sanctuary;

In other words: Rome stopped a local vassal community from choking trade via local taxation. Today we might call that free trade, the elimination of local tariffs in favor of a national system to promote unencumbered commerce.

Am reminded of Bruges in Belgium.

Easy dive/snorkel on some of these ruins. Most features are at ~15ft. Highly recommend if in Naples area. See: https://www.subaia.com/underwater-archaeological-park-of-bai...

An underwater Nabataean temple in Italy really shows how deep ancient trade ties ran, until shifting Roman politics changed everything for smaller players like the Nabataeans.

I just listened to the Fall of Civlizations podcast about the Nabateans. So I immediately realized why this is interesting, to find a nabatean temple so far away in Naples.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSfFq02pK4s

Every time I see these underwater history sites (Italy, Greece, Japan, North Africa), it gets me wondering about sea water levels rising on account of global warming.

How did the water level rise that much since it was built?

Sea level changes and seismic activities, usually.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/05/italy-supervol...

> Experts say the increased seismic activity is probably linked to a phenomenon known as bradyseism, when the earth rises or falls, depending on the cycle, caused by the filling or emptying of underground magma chambers.

Volcanic and seismic activity.

It's more that the land has subsided, rather than the sea level rising. The article mentions that this is due to volcanic activity, and I had a bit of a dig and found: https://rischi.protezionecivile.gov.it/en/volcanic/volcanoes... -- the area, including a lot of the Gulf of Pozzuoli, is part of a volcanic caldera which is still sufficiently active that the ground level gradually sinks and occasionally rises as the magma chamber underneath empties or fills. The area is the main cited example in the wikipedia article for the phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradyseism .