Ehm, today I learned this thing and if you didn’t know it, now you do...
Sardinia is also known as "the foot of Zeus."
Among the many legends about the origins of Sardinia, there is one that is particularly evocative: it is the legend of "Ichnusa," the tale passed down from the Greeks about how the island of Sardinia was born.
This story begins in a time not very well defined, certainly very very far away, even before the Nuragic civilization arose in Sardinia.
In that era, like in any respectable ancient age, the situation on our Earth was idyllic, everyone was in love and harmony, even if now and then there were squabbles between the gods and men, but nothing that milk and honey couldn't heal.
One fine day, however, that great womanizer Zeus got quite annoyed because of a husband who threw a shoe at him while, in the form of a man, he was escaping through the window of his wife’s room.
Thus, considering the affront irreparable, he decided to take revenge on the poor inhabitants of Earth, as always.
Being Zeus really a big stubborn, he refused to listen to any of the reasons put forth by those who opposed his plan for retaliation, which was to flood the whole Earth and thus drown all of humankind.
The next day, still seething with rage, Zeus called upon all the clouds of the sky and made it rain so much, but so much that the water even reached the door of his house on Olympus, forcing Hera to close the gaps with sandbags.
But, at a certain point, amid the jubilation of water, thunder, lightning, and towering waves, the situation almost slipped from his grasp and to avoid being swept away himself in the whirlpools, Zeus had to place his big foot on the Earth.
At the end of the flood, Zeus returned more than satisfied to Olympus, but lifting his little foot, he noticed that he had left a huge footprint in the waters.
He then decided that in honor of his divine big foot, that island in the middle of the sea would be called Ichnusa, from "ichnos," which in Greek means footprint.
#chiaroscuro Here’s the explanation of why, in ancient times, the Greeks and the people of the sea called "Ichnusa" what is today Sardinia (ehm, don’t confuse it with unfiltered beer, alright!).
