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Thera Eruption Fury of the Gods

What were the cultural and environmental effects of the Bronze Age explosive volcanic eruption of Thera, Greece?

“And, that high heaven might be no safer than the earth, They say that the Giants essayed the very throne of heaven, Piling huge mountains, one on another, clear up to the stars.

Then the Almighty Father hurled his thunderbolts,
Shattered Olympus, and dashed Pelion down from underlying Ossa. When those dread bodies lay o’erwhelmed by their own bulk, They say that Mother Earth, drenched with their streaming blood,
Informed that warm gore anew with life, and,
That some trace of her former offspring might remain,
She gave it human form.”
- Ovid’s Metamorphoses

No written records exist of the Minoan eruption of the Bronze Era. According to Greek legends, the Destruction of Atlantis or the Battle of the Titans occurred in Seventeenth century B.C. Admittedly, it is temping to believe idealistic and attractive myths, but modern science can explain it much more logically. Scientists can accurately extrapolate what occurred around 1600 B.C. There was an enormous volcanic explosion on Thera (now called Santorini), which is now commonly referred to as the Minoan eruption. Today we can investigate the scientific, environmental, and cultural aspects of the eruption with modern knowledge of volcanology, volcanic ash deposits, archaeological excavations, and ancient Greek legends of Atlantis.

Thera is located in the Hellenic arc, a line of islands stretching from Greece to Turkey that separates the Aegean Sea from the Mediterranean. The region owes its volcanic nature to the plate collisions between the African and European plates (Fig 1). When underthrusting occurs, in regions known as subduction zones, conditions are ripe for the generation of magmas by melting deep in the Earth. The eruption of Thera around 1600 B.C. was the largest of its kind in the region since the great Campanian eruption in the Phlegrean Fields in Italy 35,000 years ago (Fielder and Wilson, 1975). To investigate the science of the explosion, it is useful to classify the type of volcano that Thera was and is. There are several types of volcanoes using eruptive habits and form as a means of classification: Icelandic, Hawaiian, Strombolian, Vulcanian, and Plinian. Icelandic volcanic eruptions usually involve the pouring out of hot, fluid molten lava from lengthy fissures that are sometimes as long as 25 kilometers (Decker, 1991). The gases dissolved in the erupting magma boil out at surface pressures, forming spectacular lava fountains along the erupting fissures. Hawaiian...

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