One can be mistaken to think that social media tend to overanalyze trivial aspects of our daily lives but, every now and then, a post comes that puts things in a different perspective. You can count on astronauts providing such viewpoints – literaly. Last week, it was NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, sharing a photograph from his twitter feed. 

And not just any photograph; it was the Potidea Canal, in Chalkidiki, as seen from the International Space Station. Cutting across the Cassandra peninsula, one of the three that form Chalkidiki, the canal was dug more than 2000 years ago, by the Romans – the ancient Dorian city had been named Colonia Iulia Augusta Cassandrensis by the year 30 B.C. 

The canal was reconstructed during the Greek revolution for independence, in 1821, offering crucial connection between the two sides of the sea. 

But nothing can narrate the passing of time better than Williams’  photo, showing the two sides of the Isthmus displaced, an effect of “coastal currents and erosion over 2000 years “, as tweeted the astronaut.