Lefkada Sound

Lefkada

Mainland

"Our results suggest that the Corinthians, known to have excavated a navigable waterway in the 7th century BC, may just have reopened or widened a natural tsunamigenic channel. This channel has been repeatedly choked with tsunami sediments in the course of the following centuries."

Lefkada sound

But firstly, the question of Lefkada being an Island itself or not. Strabo, the great geographer who lived 2000 years ago, mentioned the digging of a canal between Lefkada and the mainland by the Corinthians in the 7th century BC. Like many others Strabo believed that Lefkada wasn't an island before the digging and therefore could not have been ancient Ithaca or any other of Odysseus' islands.

From this we learn that tectonics are not only capable of re-forming landscapes by their movement, but also through the tsunamis they create. And that a natural tsunamic channel might have been present before 700 BC, which means Lefkada could well have been an island in Homer's days.

"Based on radiocarbon datings, tsunami landfalls between the cities of Preveza and Lefkada were dated to the time periods 2870–2350 BC, around 1000 BC, 395–247 BC, around 430 AD, around 840 AD, and 1000–1400 AD.

Apparently, a tsunami changed the sound around 1000 BC, which is before Homer's but after Odysseus' days, and again around 395-247 BC, which is before Strabo's but after Homer's days. It seems Homer and Strabo might both have been right in their era. Adreas Vött might have demonstrated why Homer and Strabo contradict each other.

Lagoon

A. Vött et al, 2009a
A. Vött et al, 2006, 2007a,b

Nowadays a narrow canal is kept open to a depth of 7 meters, besides that, the rest of the sound is also submerged. Digging a canal does not necessarily mean there wasn't already water before. Strabo nevertheless concluded that Lefkada was a peninsula and many followed, blurring the quest for Ithaca in the act. Dörpfeld found Ithaca and opened the way to finding Doulichion.

In the quest for Ithaca Lefkada was never a serious candidate, until Dörpfeld published his theory "Alt-Ithaka" (ancient Ithaca) in 1927, in which he explains why Lefkada is ancient Ithaca and more or less assumes that Lefkada was geologically isolated from the mainland before digging the canal. Recent research "Traces of Holocene tsunamis across the Sound of Lefkada" reveals that his assumption was right: