Lesbos Island
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The Isle of Lesbos shown just off the coast of Turkey, northwest of Izmir |
Lesbos (
Greek –
Λέσβος -
Lésvos see also
List of traditional Greek place names)(
Turkish: Midilli Adası) is a Greek island located in the northeastern
Aegean Sea; its inhabitants are called
Lesvioi. Lesbos is part of the
Lesbos Prefecture, the third largest Greek island and the seventh largest in the Mediterranean. It has an area of 1630 km² (630 square miles) with 320 kilometres (230 miles) of coastline. Its population is approximately 90,000 about a third of which live in the capital city,
Mytilene, located in the southeastern part of the island. The remaining population is distributed in small towns and villages. The largest towns are
Kalloni,
Gera Villages,
Plomari,
Ayassos,
Eressos, and
Molyvos, the ancient Mythymna.
Mytilene was founded in the 11th century BCE by the family Penthilidae who arrived from Thessaly in mainland Greece and ruled until the popular revolt (590-580 BCE) led by
Pittacus.
The word "
lesbian" is derived from the Victorian interpretation of the
poems of
Sappho whose poetry was taken to mean sexual rather than emotional or platonic love between her and other women. Because of this association, Lesbos and especially the town of
Eressos, the birthplace of Sappho, are visited frequently by lesbian tourists to this day.
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Lesbos from the space in 1995 |
The island is mountainous; two peaks "Lepetymnos" (967 metres or 3,176 feet) and "Olympus" of similar height dominate its northern and central sections. The island's volcanic origin is manifested in several hot springs. Two almost land-locked gulfs penetrate the interior so that no part of it is farther than a few miles from the sea. The island is verdant, aptly named the Emerald Island, with a variety of flora that belies its size. Olive trees, eleven million of them, cover 40% of the island together with other fruit trees. Forests of pine and some oak occupy 20%, and the remainder is scrub, grassland and urban. In the western part of the island is the world's second largest petrified forest of Sequoia trees.
Its economy is essentially agricultural. The cultivation of the olive tree for olive oil is the main source of income for most towns and villages. Tourism in Mytilene, encouraged by its international airport, and the coastal towns of
Plomari,
Molyvos, and
Eressos contribute substantially to the economy of the island. Fishing and the manufacture of soap and
ouzo, the Greek national liquor, are the remaining sources of income.
According to myths, Lesbos was the patron god of the island. Macar is reputed to be the first king whose daughters bequeathed their names to some of the present larger towns. Homer refers to the island as "Macaros edos", the seat of Macar.
Hittite records of the
Late Bronze Age name the island Lazpas and must have considered its population significant enough to "borrow their gods", presumably idols, to intervene in the cure of their king since the local gods were not forthcoming. It is believed that emigrants from mainland Greece, mainly from Thessaly, entered the island in the Late Bronze Age and bequeathed it with the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, whose written form survives in the poems of
Sappho amongst others. The abundant gray pottery ware found on the island and the worship of Cybele, the great mother-goddess of
Anatolia, suggest the continuity of the population from Neolithic times.
When the Persian king
Cyrus defeated
Croesus (546 BCE) the Ionic Greek cities of Anatolia and the adjacent islands became Persian subjects and remained such until the Persians were defeated by the Greeks at the naval
battle of Salamis (480 BCE). The island was governed by an oligarchy in archaic times followed by quasi-democracy in classical times. For a short period it was member of the Athenian confederacy its apostasy from which is described in a stirring chapter of Thucydides's history of the Peloponnesian War. In Hellenistic times the island belonged to various Macedonian kingdoms until 79 BCE when it passed into Roman hands. During the middle ages it belonged to the
Byzantine Empire and in 1335 it was granted to the Genoese Gateluzi for economic and political reasons. The island was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in 1462 and remained in their possession until 1912 when it became part of modern Greece. The cities of Mytilene and Mythymna have been bishoprics since the 5th century.
Important archaeological sites on the island are the
Neolithic cave of
Kagiani, probably a refuge for shepherds, the Neolithic settlement of
Chalakies, and the extensive habitation of Thermi (3000-1000 BCE). The largest habitation is found in Lisvori (2800-1900 BCE) part of which is submerged in shallow coastal waters. There are also several archaic, classical Greek and Roman remains. Vitruvius called the ancient city of Mytilene "magnificent and of good taste". Remnants of its medieval history are three impressive castles.
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Olympos peak rises 968 meters over Lesbos |
Lesbos is the birthplace of several famous persons. In archaic times,
Arion developed the type of poem called
dithyramb, the progenitor of tragedy,
Terpander invented the seven note musical scale for the lyre, followed by the lyric poet
Alcaeus, and the most famous poetess Sappho. Phanias wrote history. The seminal artistic creativity of those times brings to mind the myth of
Orpheus to whom
Apollo gave a
lyre and the
Muses taught to play and sing. When Orpheus incurred the wrath of the god Dionysus he was dismembered by the Maenads and of his body parts his head and his lyre found their way to Lesbos where they have "remained" ever since.
Pittacus was one of the
Seven Sages of Greece. In classical times Hellanicus advanced historiography,
Theophrastus, the father of botany, succeeded
Aristotle as the head of the Lyceum. Aristotle and
Epicurus lived there for some time. In later times lived
Theophanes, the historian of
Pompey's campaigns, Longus wrote the famous novel
Daphnis and Chloe, and much later the historian Doukas wrote the history of the early
Ottoman Turks. In modern times the poet
Odysseus Elytis, descendant of an old family of Lesbos received the
Nobel Prize.
The climate is mild
Mediterranean. The mean annual
temperature is 18°C (64°F), and the mean annual
rainfall is 750 mm (29 [in). Its exceptional
sunshine makes it one of the sunniest islands in the
Aegean. Snow and very low temperatures are rare.
Mainly two
Petrified Forests exist in the World. The one is in Lesbos
Island and the other one in
Petrified Forest National Park in
Arizona.
Remains of
fossil plants, which form the famous
Petrified Forest of Lesvos, declared as
Protected Natural Monument, have been found in many localities on the western part of Lesvos island. The fossilised
forest of Lesvos was developed during Late
Oligocene to Lower - Middle
Miocene, due to the intense
volcanic activity in the area. Neogene
volcanic rocks dominate the central and western part of the island, comprising
andesites,
dacites and
rhyolites,
ingnibrite,
pyroclastics,
tuffs and
volcanic ash. The products of the volcanic activity had covered the
vegetation of the area and the
fossilisation process took place due to favourable conditions. The fossilised plants in Lesvos are silicified remnants of a
sub-tropical forest that existed on the north-west part of the island 20-15 million years ago.
The
geology of Lesvos Isl. has been described by
Hecht (
1971,
1974,
1975),
Pe-Piper (
1978),
Katsikatsos et al. (
1982,
1986). Hecht (
1971,
1974) presented the
geological map of the island (1: 50.000
scale).
Lesvos island belongs to the
Pelagonian geotectonic
zone (Mountrakis 1983). According to the published data and our survey, the geological structure of Lesvos island consists of the following rock-units:
* An
autochthonous unit of
Permo-Triassic age, including
schists,
quartzites, metasandstones,
phyllites and
intercalation of
marbles and
crystalline carbonates. These
rocks are widely extended at the South-East part of the island, while in the North-West part they have a rather small extension.
* An
ophiolitic nape, comprising basic and ultrabasic rocks and associated deep-sea fine-grained
sediments, as well as
metamorphic rocks,
amphibolites and
amphibole schists,
metabasites and
metasediments, parts of the sole, overthrusting the metamorphic basement.
All these
alpidic and pre-alpidic rocks were covered later by post-
alpine volcanic rocks and
Neogene marine and
lacustrine deposits such as whitish
marls, marly
limestone,
silts and
sandstone, as well as
Tertiary deposits.
The Neogene volcanic rocks, dominate the central and western part of the island.
Lesvos is part of a belt of late
Oligocene - middle
Miocene calc-alcaline to
shoshonitic volcanism of the northern and central
Aegean Sea and western
Anatolia. In the central part of the island there is a series of
volcanic centres, situated along a SW-NE direction.
Several volcanic rock units can be distinguished. The oldest
igneous rocks are
andesites of the Lower
Lava unit, dated by Borsi et. al. (
1972) as 18.0 m.y. The
Acid volcanics unit overlies the former, comprising the
Sigri pyroclastics,
ignimbrite and
ryolite domes. Sigri pyroclastics are connected with the development of the
Petrified Forest of Lesvos. The
Skoutaros Lava unit, consisting of
basalt and andesite, overlies the acid volcanics.
The
volcanic activity was continuous into the
Sikaminea unit of andesites,
dacites and
rhyolitic pyroclastics. The younger volcanics,
Eressos andesitic dykes, dated by Pe-Piper (
1978) at 16.2 m.y., are widespread in western
Lesvos. The last volcanic manifestation took place later with the local basaltic-shoshonitic lavas of eastern
Lesvos, in
Mytilene area, around 11 m.y. ago (Pe-Piper,
1978). The intense volcanic activity in the area resulted in a large number of active
surface thermal
manifestations (hot springs, various geothermal fields, etc).
Kinematic analysis carried out in
Lesvos showed that several successive
tectonic events took place during
Cainozoic. The neotectonic stress pattern in the area was determined by
quantitative methods, using tectonic striations and other kinematic indicators. Taking into account published results of regional neotectonic studies in the North
Aegean (Mercier et al.
1989,
Pavlides et al.
1990) as well as local studies (
Dotsica et al.
1994) we conclude that
Lesvos suffered at least three post-volcanic tectonic events since
Miocene. The first one produced E-W to ENE-WSW trending
sinistral strike-slip faults in Late
Miocene. The second during
Pliocene, caused NW-SE trending normal faults and NNE-SSW trending sinistral strike-slip faults. Finally during
Pleistocene the
orientation of the strain
ellipsoid changed and an extentional event in the N-S direction took place. It produced E-W trending normal faults and the reactivation of the pre-existing structures. This tectonic regime seems to be still active in the area (
Papazachos et al.
1990).
*
Music Of Lesvos*
Lesbos Prefecture*
Google map of Lesbos*
Lesvos Travel and Tourism BlogPetrified Forest of Lesvos
*
Ministry Of Culture, Natural History Museum Of The Lesvos Petrified Forest*
Ministry Of Culture, Natural History Museum Of The Lesvos Petrified Forest Information*
The Petrified Forest of Lesvos Island*
Photos from The Petrified Forest of Lesvos Island
