Thira’s catastrophy

Thira or – alias Santorin – is withoutdoubt the most peculiar member of the Kiklad’s. Its volcano eruption could have been the most elemental strike of the last four decades of the ancient world – geologysts claim. Anyway, the ruins tell a story about the past’s most mysterious catasrophy…

On the Southwestern part of the Aegean-sea, the Kiklads or Kyklads means now not only a geographic term but also a large civilization. Just the geologists write the word with an „i”, the archaeologists and art historians with a „y”. The islands – due to their cyclic situation –gained their name from th greek word cyclos (orb). Among them, Thira has only 75 square kilometres of territory, composed of five litthe islands. A population of 8 thousand people lives on the two main islands, Thira and Thirassy (in the two cities of Phira and Oia), while the lesser islands of Palea Kameni, Nea Kameni and Aspronesi are deserted. The suspicious round form of Thira, Thirassy and Aspronesi preserve the memory of a huge volcano eruption. The caldera measuring 12 kilometres over had been created in 1500 before Christ. Being in the middle of the islandcircle, the little Palea Kameni emerged from the seain the second century before the birth of Christ. The Nea Kameni was formed after a lasting eruption period, from 1707-1711, and last worked in 1950. After that only minor activity features the Moon-like island, mainly gas- and steamburstings:chugging solfabays and fumarols. The gase sand steams of Nae Kameni’s solfabays, which make great demands on the visitors, mainly contains sulfur-dioxid and hydrogen-sulfide exuding yellow sulfur-crystals out. The catastrophy that sinked Thira in the sea was on the one hand, reconstructed by monitoring past eruptions (like the Krakatau’s activity in 1883), and on the other, researchers exploring layers from the metal age were stunned by the elemental power of the explosion. To demonstrate well the eruption’s amplitude, the „voice” of the Krakatau was perceived inside a 4800 kilometres big circle, the Aegean eruption’s sudden energy blow could be overheard 6000 kilometres away on the Northern part of the Madagaskar-island or in Iceland. After the eruption, the main part of the island disappeared (the empty magmachamber imploded), leaving the caldera behind. It is gammy though: water smashed into it. The estimated height of the following wave is around 200 metres. The high water reached the neighbouring islands and it destroyed all the maritime cities. It made an especially huge destruction near the northern coast of Crete, 110 kilometres away from the eruption and swept the anchoring minoan fleet away. The volcanic bombs – depending on thir size – fell into the sea inside a 50 kilometres big circle. The rising volcanic dust and ashes from the eruption cloud by-passed the Earth several times. Its light parts – creating a special optic phenomenon – were floating in the sky for years. This mezospheric (50-80 kilometres high) layer contamination explains that purplish sky that impressed people for decades together with the mother-of-pearl clouds appearing at nights scaring lots of us.

What is left of it

Thira passed the implotic caldera creation procedure twice. Before the antique destruction of the mountain, melted rock breaked surface through the vent from the deeper magmachamber. The chamber gradually started to empty, the volcano lost its holding, imploded and left an annular caldera behind. The external islands are the remains of this. (Same processes took place in our country, in the mountain Visegrád, in the area of Börzsöny and Mátra in the time of the miocen.) On the surface, after the imposion a standing phase came next, but in the deep the processes did not end. Because of this, after 1500 years, in the inner section of the former caldera an island: the Palea Kameni raised above the sea. We may study its birth from written sources now.

 The first and the ninth strikes

As close is the realtion between the civilizations and societies of Crete and Thira, the connection between their destruction is even closer. Befor the metal aged destructive eruption, other shifts made the people to leave the island of Thira. The running men supposedly died, however. The fierce, exploding volcanic activity started a set of natural strikes, and not only Thira, but the neighbouring minoan towns found their doom. The people could have thought that the elements attacked them all at once: the sky darkened, the earth quaked, the waves destroyed everything. The date nearly checks up with the ten strikes noted in the Old-Testament. Some had come to the conclusion, that in reality, the ten strikes were the conseqences of the eruption. We cannot give countenance to the presumtion, that the light ashes reached the land of Egypt. The ninth strike, the darkness of daytime, could have been caused by it, or the waters turing to blood (the first strike) could have been due to the dissolving red volcanic metal-oxids in the waters.

Santorín	The eruption	Santorín

Santorín	Thíra