Fossils

Kythera is an island overgrown with fossils, that emerged from the sea, as did Aphrodite. In this area, between the sharp rocky elevations of the soil, there are marine fossils, mainly mollusks and algae. These fossils are neogenous marine deposits of the Pleiocene, four million years old. They are part of the modern geological history of Kythera, during which the island is in the phase of elevation and expansion. The landscape, the nature and the geology of the island may have carved the Kytherian goddess, giving local elements to her eastern origins (probably originated from Astarte of Phoenicians, who in the second millennium BC were active in Kythera in search of purple shells).