When I was young I met this old man who said he was an itinerate history teacher.  He said he wandered and taught at universities.  He had taught everywhere in the world.

Our discussion wandered to the Golden Age of Greece, which he knew about.  He seemed interested in impressing upon me the importance of the earlier Minoan civilization, which influenced the Greek.  He stated that if it hadn't been for the volcanic eruption on Santorini one fateful Fall, the Minoans might have surpassed modern Western Civilization.  This intrigued me, so the next day I went to the library to read about this Minoan civilization.  The more I read, the more I became bothered by the absence of any mention of a volcanic eruption.

Many years later I mentioned this to a historian I met at a friend's party.  He said "Sure, it has been discovered that a volcano erupted on Thera [also called Santorini], and this might have destroyed the Minoan civilization."  I asked when the discovery was made, and he said about 2 years ago.  I asked if the volcano erupted in the Fall or Spring, etc, and he laughed, saying no one would ever know that!  Years later I read a book which placed the eruption in the Fall of 1628 BC.  How could this old man have known these things 30 years ago?

When I visited Greece last year I made a point of pursuing this enigma with a visit to the University of Greece History Department.  To my surprise, there was the old man, looking exactly like I remembered him 35 years earlier.  He was teaching history, and he remembered our earlier visit in Michigan.  His memory of our encounter was remarkable.  I asked how he knew about the Thera volcanic eruption before it was discovered, and he nervously replied that the discovery was just a discovery by those who hadn't known about it.

This cryptic reply whetted my curiosity.  He seemed concerned that I had pursued the matter. I asked if we might talk that evening, at a coffee house.  He agreed.

We spoke for a couple hours, as is the custom in Greece, before getting around to the main issue.  I asked how he lived, and he said that he taught history at Universities, but had trouble holding onto jobs because he insisted on teaching history the way he knew it happened, not the way it was reported in textbooks.  During this conversation he asked about my life, and questioned me about many things that I couldn't figure out should interest him.

Finally, I raised the question that made him uneasy earlier, about how he knew about the Thera volcanic eruption 35 years ago, and he merely said that he knew a lot of history.  I pressed him further, and then he said "You won't believe the real explanation anyway, so I'll tell you.  I'm a Minoan!  I was born in the year you would call 1661 BC!  Next June I'll be 3652 years old!"

That's when I realized he was a charlatan, who was good at history, and used that knowledge to impress people with engaging first person tales.

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This site opened:  March 27, 1999.   Last Update: March 27, 1999