Why are so many ancient Mediterranean costal cities found below water after a tsunami or volcanic eruption and not buried under rock and silt or Ash like Pompeii?
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Ancient mediterranean coastal cities are under water because the water levels rose very slowly at the end of the last ice age, submerging them. It was not a catastrophic event like Pompeii.
The effect of a volcano is a lot more local than a tsunami, which means more cities can be hit by one.
Remember the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. The earthquake was of the cost of Sumatra, Indonesia and there was 10-meter tsunami higher in Sri Lank which is 1500 km away. There were waves that crossed to Africa and killed around 400 people in Somalia
Santorini in Greece where a volcanic eruption likely created a tsunami that is believed to have destroyed the Minoan culture on Crete is only 150 km away. The farthest point in the eastern Mediterranean is in Tunisia 1400km away. Many large city was along the coast because trade was a lot simpler with ships than overland, so cities was where far away tsunamis could hit them
Compare that to the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius where the smoke plume was the shape of an ellipse around 40km long and 20km wide with one entry at Vesuvius. It covered 4 cities according to https://cdn.britannica.com/74/143074-050-A70F75A1/Area-eruption-Italy-ce-Mount-Vesuvius-79-ce.jpg
The length of Crete is 240 km as a companion. A single tsunami can hit all cities along one side of the island but a volcanic eruption can’t.
Earthquakes are more common in the Mediterranean than volcanos and we often see land shift elevation during an earthquake. We also don’t always see the pyrocaustic flow and volume of ash needed to bury a town with all eruptions.
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