The Old World is a reference to those parts of Earth known to Europeans before the voyages of Christopher Columbus; it includes Europe, Asia and Africa.
Pavlopetri, a Bronze Age hellenist town, now underwater, was extensively re-surveyed recently:
Sea gives up secrets to experts
With shafts of sunlight shimmering through a few metres of crystal clear water, you can pick out the cornerstones of an ancient civilisation which inspired literature and legend.
There is more than a whiff of Atlantis about the story of Pavlopetri - the world's oldest submerged town.
But the Bronze Age site, off the coast of Laconia in Greece, has its roots in fact not fiction.
New underwater archaeology techniques - with sonar mapping used by the military and off-shore oil industry - are giving up new secrets.
An international team, given special permission to dive by the Greek government, has found artefacts on the sea bed dating back 5,000 years.
This fresh information puts the world's oldest submerged town well over a millennium older than previously thought.
The new ceramic finds form a complete and exceptional corpus of pottery
Dr Jon Henderson led a team from the University of Nottingham and said the expedition surpassed all expectations.
"This site is unique [...]
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
But if you read between the lines, it seems that the town pretty much just went down flat, with no damage.
That would seem more like a pretty quick sea level rise rather that a land sinking.
Unless it is sitting on a big strong plate of rock that would sink intact.
