CAN NEW RESEARCH METHODS REDISCOVER PUERTO BAGDAD?

(Ed.'s Note: One of our eight readers came upon this article on the CBC website and wondered whether these new archeological methods could find the site and layout of  Puerto Bagdad, a thriving smuggler port community that was established on the south side of the river in 1848 and struck by successive hurricanes starting in 1874 and finally wiped out in 1889. At it's height, some historians estimate the cosmopolitan population there at somewhere about 25,000. Bagdad was the main port for smuggled confederate cotton to run the Union blockade during the U.S. Civil War and historians say that as many as 300 ships from England and other European nations were anchored off the coast of Bagdad awaiting shipments of the precious fiber. While many claimed it was filled with criminals, some accounts say there might have been as many as seven churches in the town.)

By Sheena Goodyear
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Rungholt was once a booming trade town where residents reaped profits from the land's bountiful natural resources – until a changing climate and rising sea levels ripped it all away.

The story may sound eerily familiar, but it happened 661 years ago.

Now – thanks to advancements in technology that allow scientists to identify structures buried deep beneath the Earth's surface – researchers are learning more about this medieval city that's been long buried off the coast of Germany.

"This is really a major problem we are facing today in many places of the world with rising sea levels," says Bente Majchczack, an archeologist from Germany's Kiel University who is helping to map the ancient town.

"We can see how the people lived there, and how they reacted — and how they ultimately failed — in maintaining this landscape," he told As It Happens guest host Helen Mann.

Atlantis of the North Sea

Rungholt was a 12th-century Frisian colony that, in the years since its destruction, has gained an almost mythical status. It's widely known as "the Atlantis of the North Sea" – much to Majchczack's chagrin.

But while Atlantis is, as far as anyone knows, fictional, Majchczack says Rungholt was a very real Medieval trading hub that met a grisly fate in 1362 when a powerful storm surge completely submerged it.

Its remnants, he says, are buried beneath the muddy flats near the German island of Hallig Südfall in the Wadden Sea.

That's where he and a team of researchers, funded by the German Research Foundation, are using a combination of geoscientific and archaeological methods to paint a picture of the town.

"We're doing a magnetic survey," he said. "And this enables us to find all these buried structures and to map them out really in a black and white map where we can see what's left of the Middle Ages in this area."

The Rungholt Project team is using what archeologist Bente Majchczack calls a 'cart with the magnetic probes' to map a long-buried medieval city. (Dirk Bienen-Scholt)

So far, the team has mapped about 10 square kilometers, including 54 terps – or artificial mounds upon which medieval settlements were built – as well as systematic drainage systems, a sea dike with a tidal gate harbor and two small churches.

But they came upon their most significant discovery last month – foundations of what they believe was a 40-by-15 meter church built upon a previously unknown two kilometer long chain of terps. This was likely the town's central church, and a major community hub.

Kiel University geophysicist Dennis Wilken had the eureka moment.

"He was pushing the cart with the magnetic probes and he had found a new terp and was looking at the measurements … and then he realized what he was seeing on the screen," Majchczack said.

"I wasn't there. But a colleague said, 'And suddenly, he started dancing.' So ... it was really a very, very special moment."

To read rest of post, click on link: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/rungholt-church-discovery-1.6870278