Is this lost city a glimpse into the future?

[King_of_lion]

Franck Goddio worked in finance and economics for most of his career -- just a guy at a desk buried in numbers, all the while dreaming of what's buried at sea. But in the early 1980s, Goddio decided to dedicate his life to his true passion, underwater archaeology. And after mapping huge tracts of seabed off the coast of Alexandria, Egypt, he made an incredible find: Beneath the waves of Abu Qir Bay, a few miles east of Egypt's second-largest city, Goddio's team discovered a sunken world of temples and hieroglyphs, shipwrecks and sanctuaries. He'd found Thonis-Heracleion, the 7th century BC city named after Hercules that was a key religious center and trade hub for the ancient world. Goddio has been excavating the site since its discovery in 2000, but only a small fraction has been fully unearthed. In fact, on the morning of CNN's visit to his floating research laboratory, his team had discovered yet another shipwreck. 05 Bill Weir Egypt Archaeologists sift through new artifacts found in the excavation of Thonis-Heracleion aboard the Princess Duda research vessel. Bill Weir/CNN But for all the mystery still waiting to be discovered, the question of exactly how Thonis-Heracleion ended up beneath the waves is a more pressing concern for modern Egypt. The consensus among experts is that a confluence of natural catastrophes doomed the city, with rising seas levels, subsidence and a series of earthquakes playing a role. One of the many ancient statues Franck Goddio's team discovered beneath the sea. One of the many ancient statues Franck Goddio's team discovered beneath the sea. Christoph Gerigk © Franck Goddio / Hilti Foundation Today, just miles away from this sunken city, Alexandria's 4.5 million residents go about their daily lives, despite a ballooning number of similar environmental crises. Big storms now flood neighborhoods, forcing residents to reach their apartments by boat. The Egyptian government has warned that 13% of the country's coastline could be in peril from rising seas levels. And farmers along the Nile Delta are struggling to grow the crops they and their countrymen depend on in the region's increasingly salty, parched soils.