Research carried out by the famous oceanographer Jacques-Yves
Cousteau uncovered a submerged Minoan port with numerous
archaeological findings and amphorae. Legends about the island
say that in the years of Minoan prosperity,
the impudent Minoans hunted the wild goats, ignoring the fact that
they were the children of Zeus's beloved Amalthia. Thus, they caused
the wrath of the mighty Zeus, who used bolts of lightning to wake
a sea-beast, and ordered it to destroy the Kourites and his birthplace,
Crete. The intervention of Poseidon and the other gods of Mt Olympus
made Zeus change his mind. In order to draw away the beast, he
threw it a dry bread rusk ("paximadi") out to the open
sea.
As soon as the beast moved away, Zeus turned both the beast and
the rusk to stone, thus creating the islands of Dia and Paximadi.
