Just a short boat ride from the pounding nightclubs of Greece's Mykonos island, a silent battle is raging. Delos, one of the most important sites of the ancient world, is slowly disappearing under the rising Mediterranean, with experts saying it could vanish "in fifty years or so". Rising sea levels have already submerged monuments and caused the shoreline to retreat up to 20 metres on some parts of the island.
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00:00We are here on the shore of the sea.
00:29We can see the current shoreline.
00:32We can see that I am next to an antique monument made of marble,
00:36which was a marble bench,
00:38which is half destroyed by the current sea level.
00:44But there are other monuments that are totally below sea level.
00:50We can guess the two large circular foundations.
00:54The largest is about 20 meters,
00:57the second 10 meters.
01:13Between where I am and this line of ancient shorelines,
01:17there is between 30 and 40 meters,
01:20which shows us the elevation of the sea level,
01:24which can be estimated between 2.5 and 3 meters since antiquity,
01:30and which is currently increasing very rapidly.
01:38Delos is doomed to disappear in about 50 years,
01:41and so this archeological park,
01:43which brings us considerable information today,
01:46we may not see it again in a few years.
01:50These are actually two combined factors
01:53that jeopardize the archeological heritage of the island of Delos.
01:58It is a tectonic effect of the plates
02:00that causes the island to sink progressively,
02:03and to this is added the rise of the sea level,
02:06which is generated by the well-known phenomena of climate change.
02:20Transcription by ESO, translation by —