I resemble that remark. ;’) I beg your pardon in advance for my seeming bitchiness.
There is literally NO evidence for any supereruption of Thera in historical times. There was an eruption of course, more than one, but nothing about an eruption is mentioned in any surviving source, including Herodotus, who says quite a bit about the island — until Strabo, who writes of an eruption there that happened around 200 BC.
Yes, the island formed from a volcano. But the caldera collapse some persist in identifying as a cause for a tsunami didn’t happen in historical times, it happened at least 20,000 years ago, and the island formed a couple hundred thousand years ago.
There’s literally NO evidence for a tsunami — one is often said to have resulted from a caldera collapse at the time of the supereruption.
There’s zero evidence for a tsunami on the eastern and southern coasts of Greece, which is the direction the bay of Santorini points.
The ash layer on eastern Crete that has been linked to Thera is up to five millimeters thick — whoa — and that’s the direction the ash is said to have been blown. :’)
One could say, erosion — but the beachfront structures supposedly messed up by the supposed tsunami (which would have gone in the other direction) were actually just picked-apart for stone, and subjected to ordinary wave action from time to time over thousands of years were subjected to erosion, and the tsunami non-deniers say ordinary wear and tear on derelict buildings near the beach doesn’t take place.
Pumice attributed to Thera has been found in a few places, but hasn’t been dated. A chunk of pumice adapted as a household item and found at this site excavated by Bietak was of course attributed to Thera — because the supereruption advos saddle on anything that supports their claims — but turns out to have been A) a match with the Kos volcano, and B) over 100,000 years old. This means the pumice floated around for who knows how long, no more than 97,000 years though, and obviously can’t be used to date any eruption from Thera. :’)
Sturt Manning, the main advocate of the pushing back the date of the supereruption, seized on the example of the pumice serving tray, denying that it was in use immediately after the eruption (the 15th c BC dating advos claimed this), that it could easily have been floating around the extra 150 or so years before it was found and used — and then when it was shown to be from the Kos volcano, said, “The Tell el-Dab’a3 samples have now been identified as related to the Kos volcano (Peltz et al. 1999). The general argument about use of differing pumices of differing ages remains valid, nonetheless.” That includes Manning’s idea that pumice was a trade item, which is obviously neither here nor there vis a vis the dating of the supposed event.
There is no point, because the event never happened in the first place.
additional:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1180724/posts
A NON-Event??? I love a man who is so positive in his opinions.
Although you think the matter is settled and no event occurred, the debate about Thera has gone on for some time and has included many archeological, geologic and dendrochronological discoveries by respected academics.
As a starter I recommend the Overview and Assessment Paper delivered at the Third Thera Congress in 1989. “Overview and Assessment of the Evidence for the Date of the Eruption of Thera” in D. A. Hardy and A. C. Renfrew, eds., Thera and the Aegean World III: Proceedings of the Third International Congress, Santorini, Greece, 3-9 September 1989. Vol. III “Chronology” (London: The Thera Foundation 1990) 13-18. For citation purposes, page “numbers” are marked in the text. Click on the numbers here to see where page breaks exist in the linear text.
13 14 15 16 17 18
Please note that this article was part of a talk given at the Thera III Congress, which took place in 1989. While this article sums up the chronological evidence at hand at the time, several articles have appeared since then from Kuniholm, et al., that add to the debate. Please see Nature (online soon).
http://www.arts.cornell.edu/dendro/thera.html
http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/santorini.html
Regarding evidence of Thera sunamis I recommend:
http://www.ugurkuran.com/eng/thams/geology.pd
My studies lead me to the conclusion that an event did occur. It is only the details of how large and how intrusive in the culture of the nearby islands and mainland that may be in dispute.