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Modern Description: 4 km north of the western tip of Hydra is the uninhabited island of Dokos, ancient Aperopia. (Access only by private boat or water-taxi from Hydra.) Lacking any satisfactorily sheltered port in its own coastline, Hydra used the protected bay of Skintos, which cuts deep into the north coast of Dokos, as its winter anchorage for the fleet. But the shelter of the bay has commended itself to mariners for several thousand years before. Evidence of this was the discovery in 1989 of the earliest cargo ship-wreck found so far in the Eastern Mediterranean area, in the waters just off the northeastern tip of the island near Cape Myti Kommeni. The ship, which foundered some time around 2200 BC, was carrying a cargo of vases, amphorae, and other terracotta items, such as braziers. Since then, excavations near to the cape, and at Lezeda on the north coast further to the west, have uncovered two important settlements of the mid-3rd millennium BC. Continuity was maintained into Mycenaean times: the extent of the remains of the two walled settlements which flourished in the 13th and 12th centuries BC, in tandem with the citadel above Vlychos on Hydra, shows that the waters of the Saronic Gulf have always had considerable importance, with key trade routes that go back to the 3rd millennium BC, and perhaps earlier.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dokos
Wikidata ID: Q1140015
Trismegistos Geo: 61205

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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