KYTHIRA PALAIOPOLI - L.Boukouvala - 10


   

The beach of Paleopolis exudes, even for the uninitiated, the mystery of the place where for the first time the phenomenon of Life came out from the sea to the land, with such dynamism and an evolutionary perspective that leads to the  marvelous.

Hesiod tells us of the emergence of Aphrodite on this beach, from the sperm of Uranus which fell into the immense marine amniotic sac of the Earth.

And this absolutely dominant deity of the Minoan period in the Cycladic civilization of bronze, the Potnia of the Linear B inscriptions, cannot only be Astarte/Aphrodite. It must be the deity represented in whose cult all the frescoes are dedicated at the famous excavation at Akrotiri of Santorini.

When you reach the first accessible beach, you encounter a peaceful landscape without any particular signs. However, swimming towards the stone complex and the cave/gate that leads to the second part of the beach and exiting on the other side of the stone complex, one encounters a unique sculptural complex that has been formed by geological phenomena of great intensity for millennia.

These extraordinary and persistent geological upheavals, with a marvelous and admirable plastic effect, cannot be unrelated to the accounts of the culture of the Bronze Age and the relative cult of the dominant divinity (a serene cult where girls and women of all ages offer flowers to a Spring deity) of Astarte / Aphrodite, which marks the primordial event of the emergence of life on earth from the sea, on this same beach.