Atlit Yam

The account

Before bronze, before writing, a village stood on the Carmel coast: stone houses, a dug well, a circle of standing stones around a spring. The sea rose at the end of the ice age and closed over all of it. Nine thousand years later, divers found skeletons in their graves and wheat in the mud, and in two of the dead, the oldest known tuberculosis on earth. The well still holds fresh water under the sea.

Leads, where the trail points now

• Pin down the most specific last-known position in the record before going; the search centers on Off Atlit, Carmel coast, Israel.
• What you are chasing is A Neolithic village with its well, its ritual stone circle, its dead. Work the documented record of Atlit Yam back to primary sources and separate what is attested from folklore.
• Israel Antiquities Authority research site, not open to recreational diving.