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Historians unravel Alexander the Great's secret to Tyre's fall

Posted May 15, 2007 at 07:51PM by Ceasar S. Listed in: Oceans, Geology Tags: France, Aristotle, The History Channel
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Now we're sure that if you've tuned into the History Channel once or twice in a month, you might have caught sight of the particular documentary of the young would-be-Emperor and his triumphant conquest of the Phoenician coast. Tyre, a two-part fortress in the days Alexander the Great conquered the Phoenician peninsula, fell drastically to his army's might.

Alexander the Great - Image 1


Being that Megas Alexandros (Alexander the Great) was a student of Aristotle himself, there was no surprise that Alexander was first to develop the early "city destroyers" - or siege engines. Throughout history, it was made known that the unified forces of the Persian Empire and the Macedonian army made use of siege towers and ballistae to breach the most impregnable of fortresses.

But using these weapons was futile for the fortress-city of Tyre, where half of it lay one kilometer out into the sea. When half of the city fell to Alexander's might, the remaining forces of Tyre - which included its elite navy - kept the invading forces at bay within the island-fortress walls, aided by the natural barrier of the sea.

Historians figured that Alexander the Great (or his engineers, whoever the real credit goes to) just had to make use of his weapons to reduce the fortress's walls to rubble, and claimed that the Macedonian and Persian forces built a nearly kilometer long land-bridge to transport men and material to the island.

But what geoarchaeologist Nick Marriner discovered included the fact that instead of the popular speculation that the bridge was artificially erected purely by stone and timber, they actually used a natural sand formation - called a tombolo - to provide the needed stability and foundation for the bridge.

The Siege of Tyre - Alexander the Great created a 'mole' to the island - Image 1


Marriner speculates that in those days, the sea levels were much higher than usual, keeping a part of the supposed peninsula - the part between the raised island and the mainland - underwater. But because waves were ineffectively hitting the mainland due to the shallow water, sand continued to accumulate in that particular area.

"It meant that the causeway foundations could be laid down in relatively shallow water," said Marriner. Nick Marriner is from the European Center for Research and Teaching on the Geosciences of the Environment, located in Aix-en-Provence, France.

[Via Scientific American] Permalink  |   Email this  |   Linking Blogs   |   Digg It!

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