The great Minoan eruption of Thera volcano and the ensuing tsunami in the Greek Archipelago

Abstract

The eastern Mediterranean has been the cradle of many great civilizations. The history of the area consisted of glorious battles, heroic acts, and the rise and fall of great civilizations. But, sometimes, natural hazards became the cause for a new classification of the political, as well as of the military status quo of the region. The enormous eruption of the submarine volcano at the Greek island of Thera (Santorini) during the Bronze Age, around 1500 BC, is such a natural hazard. The tsunami generated by the eruption, literally wiped out the peace-loving Minoan civilization who inhabited the island of Crete. After the sea subsided, the configuration of the area was altered, and the decline of the Minoan principality on the Archipelago began. The present paper introduces evidence concerning the tsunami and states some of the after-effects which were partly responsible for the decline of the Minoan empire. All the information is gathered from historical sources and from recent research works. An effort has been made to include many of the theories introduced by various researchers through time concerning the event. Finally, information has been included from all known research, as well as from the author's own conclusions, in order to make the paper useful to future researchers.

Nothing Lasts Forever: Environmental Discourses on the Collapse of Past Societies

“…Marinatos (1939) saw the eruption itself as destroying the palaces, but it later became clear during excavation of Thera that this was not possible since the eruption took place perhaps some 30-50 years earlier, in LM 1A (Keller 1980;Pichler and Schiering 1977). Other arguments associate the eruption and its possible effects-earthquakes, ashfall, and tsunamis-with the collapse (Antonopoulos 1992;de Boer and Sanders 2002;Luce and Bolton 1976;McCoy and Heiken 2000;Monaco and Tortorici 2004). These mechanistic arguments, however, have been doubted and disproved.…”

Geoarchaeological tsunami deposits at Palaikastro (Crete) and the Late Minoan IA eruption of Santorini

“…Given the uncertainty of the precise nature and size of tsunami triggers during the Minoan Santorini eruption, forward modeling by specifying initial conditions (Antonopoulos, 1992;Pareschi et al, 2006) is a mute proposition. Modeling ought to be based as much as possible on field evidence, as attempted before .…”

“…Various tsunami models have been developed in relation to the Minoan Santorini eruption (Yokoyama, 1978;Antonopoulos, 1992;Pareschi et al, 2006). But surprisingly little robust onshore field evidence for Minoan tsunami deposits has been found so far in the Aegean specifically and the eastern Mediterranean region in general; see Dominey-Howes (2004) for a comprehensive review.…”

Large earthquakes and the abandonment of prehistoric coastal settlements in 15th century New Zealand

“…Antonopoulos (1992) suggested the possible destruction of Knossos, Crete, by a tsunami (and, presumably, the subsequent abandonment of the city), although numerical modeling by Minoura et al (2000) casts some doubt on this assertion. Hutchinson and McMillan (1997) report a 3000-year history of temporary and permanent village abandonment along 600 km of coastline in British Columbia, Canada, based on palaeoseismic and archaeological records, as well as native oral traditions.…”