Word: thera
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...devastated the island, or that it had been systematically conquered and destroyed by invaders from Greece. In 1939, Greek Archaeologist Spyridon Marinates suggested that the Minoan civilization had actually been destroyed around 1500 B.C. by falling ash and poisonous fumes from a volcanic eruption on the island of Thera (now called Santorin), 75 miles to the north. But the volcanic theory did not quite square with all the available facts; some of the pottery found on Crete, for example, had apparently been fashioned as late as 1450 B.C., 50 years after the estimated date of the Thera eruption...
Tidal Terror. Last year, after careful analysis of cores taken from the sea bottom in the eastern Mediterranean, Columbia University Geologists Dragoslav Ninkovitch and Bruce Heezen established that there had actually been two volcanic eruptions on Thera, one around 1500 B.C., the other some 50 years later. The second eruption was so violent, they determined, that its ashes and poisonous vapors were carried hundreds of miles to the south by prevailing winds...
Archaeologist Marinatos now believes that the latest geological findings explain the apparent discrepancy in his 1939 theory. In a paper recently presented at an archaeological conference in Canea, Crete, he explains that the first eruption destroyed all life on Thera around 1520 B.C., but had little effect on Crete, where the Minoan culture continued to flourish...
When the second and incredibly violent eruption ripped Thera around 1470 B.C., however, it caused the central and western part of the little island to sink and generated tsunamis (seismic sea waves) between 100 and 165 feet high. "Within 20 minutes, these waves hit the Cretan coast with terrifying fury," says Marinates, "destroying everything they could reach." The waves were accompanied by a rain of volcanic ash that buried nearly everything left standing and by fumes that poisoned the population. In the wake of the catastrophic eruption, most of the surviving Minoans fled Crete, sailing to other Mediterranean islands, mainland...