Gortyn and Lake Zaros...and what is lake coring anyway?

A truly inspirational couple of days: wandering through the ancient ruins of Gortyn, hearing Andrew Shapland from the Ashmolean Museum talk about what life might have been like centuries ago.

We also visited Zaros Lake for a "field lecture" by Dr James Bendle. No slides, just a beautiful natural setting to learn more about lake coring and ancient civilisations.

We learned why lake coring is important for understanding past climates. Weather stations have only recorded data for a little over a century. To look back thousands of years, scientists rely on "climate proxies"—natural stand-ins preserved inside lake cores. The layers act as a data machine for paleoclimate reconstruction in three major ways: Scientists core lakes in Crete to uncover the overlap between climate changes and the rise and fall of ancient civilisations, such as the Minoans. Because Crete sits at a critical geographical crossroads in the Eastern Mediterranean, its local climate history provides valuable context for both European and North African climate patterns. Cores from Crete show exactly when humans introduced specific crops. For example, mud samples from Lake Kournas tracking back 10,000 years reveal the precise era when intensive olive cultivation began.

By decoding these underwater time capsules, scientists can build a highly accurate history of Earth's climate baseline long before humans kept records.