"But can earthquakes change the layout of entire islands?"

compare:
http://www.odysseus-unbound.org/images/island.jpg

Vs. an old Roman Map with old city names from 2000 years ago.
http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/Ima ... cia/1*.jpg

But it's not a 2000 year old Roman map. It's "taken from an unidentified late 19c English-language school atlas of the Roman world" according to the originating website at; http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/G ... /home.html

Am I missing something?

Oh well.

Correct...I'm not sure where he got the atlas from, etc...

Things like "Gades" or "Cadiz" in Spain appear as an island, when it is not an island today.

It sounds to me like these guys found the city "Cephalania".

It would be interesting to compare Strabo, or Ptolemy.

By 450BC, "Ithaca" and "Cephalania" are two different islands, as described in the "Periplus of Pseudo-Skylax".

"34. AKARNANIA. And after Ambrakia is the nation Akarnania, and the first city on this spot
is Argos the Amphilochian, and Anaktorion with a harbour, and outside the Anaktoric gulf the
following cities: Akte and the city Leukas with a harbour: this city stands forth upon the
Leukatas, which is a promontory from afar in the sea*. This city they formerly used to name
Epileukadioi. And Akarnanes having made civil war took out of Corinth one thousand resettlers:
and the re-settlers having killed them hold their territory themselves. And this city is now
an island, having cut off the isthmus with a ditch [Euripos dug through in the isthmus]. And
after these places a city, Phara, and by these places there is an island, Ithaca, with a city and a
harbour. After these places an island, Kephalenia. And I return again onto the mainland, whence
I left. After these places a city, Alyzia, and by this an island, Karnos, and a city, Astakos, with a
harbour, and the river Acheloös, and Oiniadai city: and to these [cities] there is a voyage inland
by the Acheloös. And there are also other cities of Akarnanians in the interior. And the coastal
voyage of Akarnania is of two days*. And Akarnania all has good harbours: and by these places
many islands lie beside, which the Acheloios by silting up is making mainland. The islands are
called Echinades: and they are deserted."

Mapmaking is a quirky business. Heck, I'm from California, which appears as an island on some old Spanish maps.

Has anyone here ever played the game of making a map
of a wilderness region, using only classical surveying tools?
It's a lot harder than it might seem!

Stheneleos

_________________
"When on music's mighty pinions, souls of men to heaven rise,
then all vanish earth's dominion; man is native to the skies."

Me too -- from California -- the northern part, which many of us here still consider to be sort-of-an-island. Every time we think about "Los Angeles"... Mapmaking is quirky enough even with modern tools, much less using what they had in the classical. Particularly geophysical: arbitrary point-in-time choices always, there, in an area as active as California, or Greece.

And something you said, AtlantisIsNext:

> By 450BC, "Ithaca" and "Cephalania" are two different islands

-- that's been a very active earthquake zone, with lots of uplifting plates & falling rocks etc., always. So I wonder whether changes there have been frequent enough to cause said map to oscillate, historically: maybe "two islands" in 1200 BC, then "one" in 800BC, then another big plate action & quake and "two islands" again by 450BC, and so on?

The "Strabo's channel" surface is not very far above sea level now, once the rockfalls and erosion get subtracted: so maybe it's been dipping up & down, relative to the water-level, every few centuries -- sometimes wet, sometimes dry. Strabo said that himself: "'often' submerged" (p.52).

"Doulichion and Same and wooded Zacynthos."

Same = Cephalonia on the Roman Map above.
Zacynthos is known.

If this Theory is correct, then the current island of Ithaca would be Doulichion.

This is all wonderful.....what does the archaeology say?

Or is that irrelevant?