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It used to be thought that, around 3,600 years ago, the flourishing Bronze Age (Minoan) civilisation and culture of the eastern Mediterranean was wiped out by the volcanic eruption of the island of Santorini. The eruption also became linked with the Old Testament story of the darkness that beset Egypt as one of the seven plagues and with Plato's description of the fabled island of Atlantis.
Walter Friedrich, the author of Fire in the Sea, is a German professor and geologist, now based in Denmark, who has researched and published many details of the Santorini eruption. In this superbly illustrated account for the general reader, he tells how around 1600 B.C., the Minoan inhabitants of Santorini witnessed their paradisal island home of Thera blow up in their faces.
Like a vigorously shaken giant champagne bottle, the Santorini volcano suddenly erupted, producing one of the largest explosions ever witnessed by humans. So much volcanic ash and pulverised rock was thrown into the atmosphere that it circulated the Earth for several years and changed global climates.
Amazingly, the Minoan civilisation was not wiped out. Detailed dating has shown that the eruption happened well before the Minoan civilisation declined. Friedrich sets the detailed story in the wider geological evolution of the whole region. As the continental plate of Africa pushes north, the whole of the eastern Mediterranean has become dangerously active. Today, tourists blithely sail into the bay of Thera, the 5km wide crater left by the eruption, before wandering around the still gently active volcano. It is anyone's guess when Santorini will next explode, but one thing is sure--it will. Fascinating reading, especially for those taking holidays in the Aegean!
Fire in the Sea, has a large format (A4), which helps do justice to the photos and diagrams. Appendices give a translation of Plato's dialogue concerning Atlantis, lists of fossils, references to research and other writings about Santorini and an index. --Douglas Palmer
Site of one of the most intensely studied volcanoes, Santorini in the Aegean Sea supported the thriving Minoan civilization until a titanic eruption about 3,600 years ago. Now Santorini attracts a seasonal influx of tourists to appreciate the spectacular volcano, a semicircular caldera rising hundreds of meters above the sea, which the wealth of photographs in Friedrich's survey, though intended to help explain Santorini's stratigraphy, shows off handsomely. The basic explanation of the volcano is simple: it resulted from an upwelling of magma from the subduction of the African plate beneath the Eurasian plate. Its surface expression is a layer cake of deposits, which is to be expected from a place that blows up every few millennia. The heart of the text describes how the rocks of Santorini were dated and a sequence of eruptions established. In the course of geological fieldwork, the relics of a buried civilization have come to light. Friedrich capably summarizes that archaeological discovery, complete with the notion that the Minoan civilization inspired Plato's reference to Atlantis
Gilbert TaylorCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
