Atlantis - Third Part - Santorini eruptions

It was the eruptions of AD 19, 46–47 and 60 that created the island of Theia, ‘Divine’, now called Palea Kameini. The eruption of AD 60 was reported by Philostratus, together with the peculiar detail that the sea receded about one kilometre from the south coast of the island. This may have been associated with a tsunami, commonly produced by earthquakes focused on the seabed, and likely to occur during a submarine eruption.

In AD 726, Santorini experienced another major eruption. This was adjacent to Theia (Palea Kameini), produced a third island and threw ash as far as Macedonia and Anatolia.

In 1573 an eruption created the islet of Mikra Kameini to the east of Palea Kameini. In 1650 a series of earthquakes led up to a major submarine eruption off the north-east coast of Thera, forming a temporary island called Kouloumbos. Poisonous gases released during the eruption blinded or killed many Therans and their livestock.

Reconstruction of bronze age Thera

In the eighteenth century, Leychester reported that the new island had disappeared (eroded by wave action), forming a reef. According to other sources, the flames of the 1650 eruption were visible from Heraklion, and tsunamis swept among the Turkish ships beached on the island of Dia, close to the north coast of Crete.

For four years beginning in 1707 there were explosive eruptions of lava back in the caldera between Theia, now called Palea Kameini, and Mikra Kameini. The build up of lava created a new island called Nea Kameini: the eruptions of 1866–70 trebled its size. The King George I crater, formed at this time, is now 131 metres high. But for our story the main importance of this eruption sequence is that it attracted geologists and archaeologists to Santorini, where for the first time they recognized traces of a forgotten bronze age civilization.

There was a major explosion on Nea Kameini in August 1925 and the eruption that followed lasted nine months. 100 million cubic metres of lava poured out, joining Nea Kameini and Mikra Kameini and producing a lava dome. A further eruption in 1928 formed the Tholos and Nautilus craters. In 1939–41, the Nea Kameini craters were active again. In 1950 another explosion on the top of Nea Kameini led to the formation of the newest dome, Liatsikas, beside the King George I crater.

For the last two millennia a long series of volcanic eruptions in the Santorini island group is well documented. Cone after cone has been added to the centre of the bay, the rim of which is the outer edge of a much bigger crater than any that has been active in the last 2,000 years. Unless the process is interrupted by another caldera eruption, the bay will eventually be refilled with lava and Santorini will be one island.

The geology shows that before the caldera eruption of 1520 BC Thera had already been disembowelled by more than one earlier eruption and the bronze age island had a substantial South Bay occupying the southernmost third of the modern caldera.

This south west basin may have been formed during a caldera eruption before 54,000 BC. Another caldera eruption near Cape Riva in 18,300 BC created the north west basin, so there may have been a bay, or at least low ground, between northern Therasia and Thera during the Minoan period.

The volcanic peaks visible on Santorini in the Minoan period had developed over a million years, from several vents within a preexisting island group of non-volcanic origin. Mesa Vouno and Profitis Elias, for instance, stood above the waves of the ancient Mediterranean much as they do now, long before the volcanic cone complex was built. Monolithos and Platinamos too stood up from this ancient sea, as peaked islets of schist and marble.

 In the bronze age, Monolithos was still a separate islet, but Mesa Vouno and Profitis Elias were already engulfed in the volcano which made a single ‘Greater Thera’, an island shaped like a huge fish head with its mouth gaping towards the south west.






Reconstruction oft he bronze age Thera seen from the west

PART ONE OF THIS STORY @ Atlantis - Facts

ALSO READ:

Atlantis is Found ???!!!
http://www.triond.com/users/celeres

Dionysus Cults

Aphrodite Cults

Apollo - Greek Deities

Neanderthals - Part One

Artemis' Cults

Barbarian Migrations of The Fourth and Fifth 

Teutonic Knights

Atlantis - Second Part - Santorini

On the southernmost edge of Thera, the main island of Santorini, the principal town of this civilization outside Crete was entombed and preserved by ashfall from the eruption. Was this the metropolis of Atlantis?




Figure 1: Location of the Thera (Santorini) island

It has been suggested that along the way, perhaps in transposing the story from Egyptian to Greek for Solon, there was a translation error, that Plato was really describing locations on two different islands, that the plain round the royal city was the Plain of Mesara on Crete, while the metropolis was on Thera.

Thera’s location, central in the Aegean and southernmost of the Cyclades, goes far towards explaining why it became prosperous in the bronze age. Within the small ring of islands – Thera, Therasia and Aspronisi – is a huge oval bay 10 kilometres across, the focus of the eruption that destroyed the bronze age civilization on Santorini. Where once hill country rose to volcanic peaks, the sea is now 400 metres deep. The steep walls of this caldera showing the layers of ash and lava of ancient volcanic eruptions give the bay a hostile coastline. Santorini’s main town, Phira, perches on the caldera rim, overlooking the bay. Today there are thirteen villages on Santorini and 6,000 people. Thirteen rural settlements are known from the bronze age too, but given the processes of destruction and burial it is unlikely that that we will ever see the complete pattern.

Ancient Santorini was probably more populous than today, with over 6,000 people in the city of Akrotiri alone.

Figure 2: Santorini or Thera, showing the location of the bronze age city at Akrotiri

Santorini suffers serious climatic problems, including perennial drought. Add earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and Santorini becomes a very hostile place.

The Aegean has always been dangerously earthquake-prone; here the African plate, invisible beneath the Mediterranean floor, drives slowly but inexorably under Europe. All Aegean islands are prone to earthquakes. The effect of the 1956 earthquake is still felt in Santorini. Forty-eight were killed and hundreds injured.

The ensuing panic and disruption of everyday life caused many to leave, reinforcing a century-long trend to move to an easier life on the Greek mainland. Since 1956 hot gases and sulphurous emissions have steamed continuously from the craters and fissures in the middle of the bay. The forces that ravaged Santorini in 1956 will do so again as they did in antiquity, when they emptied it of its bronze age Atlanteans. In the centre of the caldera are the two newest islands in the Santorini group, Palea and Nea Kameini, the Santorini volcano rebuilding on its old foundations. Though no more than a few tens of metres high out of the water, they have been built to that height from the seabed, so they are already substantial volcanic peaks.

The first documented eruption was in 197 BC, when people from Rhodes saw an eruption that resulted in the creation of a small island: they called it Iera, ‘holy’, and dedicated an altar to Poseidon, the god of the Atlanteans.

For the volcano to have broken the sea surface in 197 BC it must have been building up to that level during a series of earlier eruptions that went unreported. Wave action later eroded the topof this volcano off, creating the Bankos Reef.


PART ONE OF THIS STORY @ Atlantis - Facts

ALSO READ:

Atlantis is Found ???!!!

http://www.triond.com/users/celeres

Dionysus Cults

Aphrodite Cults

Apollo - Greek Deities

Neanderthals - Part One

Artemis' Cults

Barbarian Migrations of The Fourth and Fifth 

Teutonic Knights

Apollodorus the library of Greek mythology

Here I would like to present you Apollodurs the Library.

I tend to cover  not only archaeological "news" that tell us about history of our planet, but also works from the ancient times that were made and read by the ancients.

Works like that and survived till our days so you could have insight into their world with their own eyes, as they saw it and understand it.

Apollodorus is such work were you can see how the ancient Greeks saw the world around them and how they used stories about heroes and Gods to explain that same world they lived in.

The only work of its kind to survive from classical antiquity, the Library of Apolodorus is a unique guide to Greek mythology, from the origins of the universe to the Trojan War.

The only work of its kind to survive from classical antiquity, the Library of Apolodorus is a unique guide to Greek mythology, from the origins oft he universe to the Trojan War.

Apollodorus’ Library has been an invaluable source book for early Greek myths from the time of its compilation in the first/second century AD to the present, influencing writers from the scolars of Byzantium to Robert Graves. It provides a complete history of Greek myth, telling the story of each of the families of heroic mythology and the various adventures associated with the main heroes and heroines, from Jason and Perseus to Heracles an Helen fo Troy. As a primary source for Greek myth, as a reference work, and as an introduction of hoe the Greeks themselves viewed their mythical traditions, the Library indispensable to anyone who has an interest in classical mythology.

APOLLODORUS is the name traditionally ascribed to the author of the Library. Although he was formely identified as Apollodorus of Athens, a distinguished Alexandrian scholar of the second century BC, it is now recognized that the Library must have been written at a later period, probably the first or second century AD. It is not know wheter Apollodorus was the author’s true name; in any case we know nothing about him...................................

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