Thera

Thera, or the modern island of Santorini, located sixty-nine miles north of the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea, was devastated by a volcanic eruption sometime in the 15th century BC. The eruption was one the the most powerful in the past 10,000 years and contributed to the fall of the Minoan Civilization. The other event to contribute to the fall of the Minoan Civilization was the rise of the Mycenean Civilization on the island of Crete.

'About 7 cubic miles of rhyodacite magma was erupted. The plinian Column during the initial phase of the eruption was about 23 miles (36kn) high. The removal of such a large volume of magma caused the volcano to collapse, producing a caldera....The eruption probably caused the end of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete.' (Volcano)

What was discovered on the island was simply amazing. An entire city was unearthed. Because of the delicate nature of the building materials, a roof was built over the site to protect it from rain. The slightest sprinkle would have caused every building to collapse. The buildings had wood beams, which ha d decomposed over the centuries. In excavation the wood beams were replaced with cement because it could conform to the shape of the wood.

No bodies, or small possessions have been found at the site. This may point to a period of volcanic and seismic activity before the eruption. If the eruption had been unexpected, archaeologists should have found the remains of people caught in the ash or magma from the eruption.

'The absence of any bodies and the dearth of metal artifacts or other portable objects of obvious material value in the ruins of Akrotiri [on Santorini] clearly indicate that the inhabitants had ample warning of the imminence of the volcanic eruption which buried the island so deeply in ash and other volcanic debris that it became uninhabitable for as much as a century or two.' (Thera)

The destruction of Thera reminds some of the legend of Atlantis. Plato described an advanced society, perhaps the Minoans, living on the island of Atlantis. According to his story, this island sunk beneath the sea after a great catastrophe. This may or may not make sense given that Plato claimed that Atlantis existed 9000 years before him, and not the 900 years that separated the eruption on Thera and his time. (Atlantis)

The Greek archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos was the first to believe that there was something buried under the farmlands of the island of Thera, specifically near the modern village of Akrotiri. Marinatos published his ideas about Thera in the 1939 edition of the archaeological journal Antiquity. He had wanted to start exploring the island at that time, however; due to the outbreak of World War II and the Greek Civil War, Marinatos was unable to explore the island until the 1960s. The research Marinatos tried to do on previous archaeological explorations of the island was difficult because there were no written records and all evidence of exploration had been destroyed by plowing.

Marinatos was finally able to begin excavation at Akrotiri in1967. Unfortunately, Marinatos died in 1974. This caused a brief pause in the excavation and actual digging resumed in 1976 when Christos Doumas took over the site. It is said that it will take several decades of archaeologists to complete the site.

[link to www.mnsu.edu]