Mediterranean Mystery: A sudden and inscrutable, Bronze Age Catastrophe. Weekly Standard.

What caused a depression and the decline of so many rich Mediterranean kingdoms around the end of the Bronze Age?

Eric H. Cline is the author of 1177 B.C. The Year Civilization Collapsed. Susan Kristol has written a review in the Weekly Standard (May 12,2014).

The catastrophe was apparently the final volcano eruption after a string of earthquakes on the island of Santorini, then called Thera which decimated Akrotiri.

I remember viewing a program about this disaster that claimed agriculture was harmed around the world for two years due to the resulting climate change.

If you go on Wikipedia, the mass of geographical data suggests that this was the world record for catastrophic volcano eruptions. But, is Wikipedia correct?

Archaeologists have frequently guessed the date of the eruption as about 1500 B. C.; but perhaps these guesstimates are changing.

We can argue about the dates, but what are the lessons to be learned? If this was actually Plato’s Atlantis, his suggestion was too much high living is disastrous.

Most Minoans certainly enjoyed a lively and sophisticated life as indicated by their art. The citizens of Akrotiri were able to figure out the oncoming disaster and fled.

That survival was not part of Plato’s story, so perhaps this was not Atlantis; perhaps he made it all up. Knowing about the impending Doomsday they left.

That was more than the  people of Pompeii could discern. Is there no way to control volcanos and other disasters of Nature? Can we forecast disasters?

By

Deb Stelton