Geology
John Underhill, the third co-author of the study, is Professor of Stratigraphy at the University of Edinburgh and a recognized authority on the structure and stratigraphy of sedimentary basins, and on the geology of the Ionian islands. His contributions in several areas, including investigation of the prior existence of "Strabo's Channel", and analyses of factors such as tectonic uplift, and erosion, also were crucial in authenticating Paliki.
The initial geological problem posed by Bittlestone — whether sea levels in the region might once have been higher, such that the narrow isthmus now connecting Paliki to the rest of Kefalonia might once have been submerged — turned out to be exactly the opposite, the sea didn't fall but the land rose, and the periodic earthquakes that triggered this upthrust simultaneously brought down catastrophic rockfalls. Paliki sits on the edge of the European continental shelf, which is being pushed continuously from the southwest by the African plate, in a plate tectonics shift which causes constant earthquakes: the Ionian islands were devastated by one such earthquake as recently as 1953, and there have been many before that. Observation of many geologic clues in the region shows that uplift — the result of earthquakes — has in fact occurred.
The insufficiency of the uplift to account for the altitude of some of the terrain now at the channel site is explained by high volume landslips similar to those that impacted northern Pakistan in 2005: earth and rocks and whole sections of the mountainside itself falling from the high Kefalonia mountains which line the eastern edge of the isthmus, down onto what once had been "Strabo's channel". Findings of ancient Greek structures now buried beneath this erosion provided part of the confirmation for the proposal, which now is to be subjected to a battery of geological tests.
On the other hand, one objection to the Odysseus Unbound theory is that (whether or not subsequent landslips could have converted it into the current landform) the hypothesized channel was an implausible geographical structure. It is not clear what natural processes could have created a deep valley linking two arms of the same sea which was several miles long yet only a hundred yards or so wide at sea-level throughout. (If it existed today, it would be a world-famous natural phenomenon.)
Read more about this topic: Odysseus Unbound