Brève n° 89
Studying the ancient eruption
of Thera
Article d’Helen Altonn paru dans le Honolulu
Star-Bulletin, vol. 12, n° 237, le samedi 25 août 2007.
Floyd McCoy, Windward Community College
professor of geology and oceanography, hopes during a year and a half in Greece
to resolve the "hugely controversial" question of when the Thera
volcano erupted.He will investigate the Mediterranean's largest volcanic
eruption in history as a Fulbright scholar. McCoy has spent the past 20 years
studying geological evidence of the Late Bronze Age eruption of Thera volcano
that led to the end of the Minoan culture on the island of
Santorini.Geophysicists say the eruption occurred in about 1645 B.C., but
archaeologists prefer 1500 B.C., McCoy said. He is combining geology and
archaeology into a new discipline -- geoarchaeology -- to try to settle the
controversy.
McCoy said he became fascinated with the story
of Thera volcano while getting his degrees and working at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts on the geology of the sea floor in
the Mediterranean. "I kept finding volcanic ash material on the sea
floor," he said.
He was on Columbia University's research
faculty for about a dozen years to work on the Thera eruption, he said.
"And I haven't stopped. Greece is a nice country. The culture we've come
to like, and this eruption is stunning."
He found evidence that it was much more
violent than believed, larger than the 1883 Krakatoa eruption that killed more
than 36,000 people.
Scientists believe the Thera eruption spewed
massive volcanic ash that led to climate changes, crippled ancient cities and
wreaked havoc on cultures and sea trade.McCoy will be working with a Texas
A&M University group looking for shipwrecks in the deepest part of the
ocean from the same period as the eruption. They will map the sea floor and
look for evidence of ancient trade routes between Greece and Egypt. He will
also develop remote techniques to record information in waters 12,000 feet
deep.
"The (Minoan) culture was ruined by this
volcanic eruption," McCoy said. "There is a buried city on Santorini
where I've done work that is just as good as Pompeii," he said, referring
to the Roman city buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.
"This is where we know about the furniture, beds, paintings -- their
lifestyle.
"He is excavating three sites this summer
and three or four next summer "to make sense of the geology."McCoy's
work has been featured on NBC, BBC and the National Geographic, Learning and
Discovery channels. He said he has done 14 TV documentaries on the eruption,
and the 15th is in the offing. "At the end of every one of these, the
question is, How is this related to Atlantis?"
There are theories that Thera was the fabled
lost city of Atlantis. "As a scientist, I can't make a definite
statement," McCoy said. "About all I could say is, I wish it could be
related to Atlantis."He will be based in Athens, Greece, as a visiting
research professor at the American School of Classical Studies from September
to May. He will mentor students and teach graduate seminars on natural hazards
and geology.As one of seven U.S. representatives going to Greece this year in
the Fulbright Program, he will try to increase understanding between people of
the two countries. The Fulbright grant is supported by funding from Congress,
Greece and the private sector.
DATE DE PUBLICATION EN LIGNE : 9 JUIN 2008