The death of the Minoan civilization or Atlantis?
About 3,700 years ago, the greatest catastrophe in European history occurred - a volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini. It was 50 times more powerful than the eruption of Vesuvius - its sound was heard in Norway. About 35 cubic kilometers of lava and ash were thrown into the air. The climate has changed even in China. According to the Bamboo Annals, the sun was dim, a yellow fog spread, there was a frost in July, and there were three years of crop failure.
A huge tidal wave 200 meters high struck Crete and destroyed the great Minoan civilization that worshiped a double-edged ax. (The darkness that came from the Mediterranean covered the city hated by Theseus).
Eruptions of this magnitude occur on Earth once every thousand years on average. Over the past 5 thousand years on the entire Earth, apparently 4-5 eruptions were comparable to or exceeded the explosion of Santorini during the Minoan era. At the same time, the eruption of Santorini is the only one that happened in the "very heart" of the civilized world. Interestingly, the largest volcanic explosion on earth in the last 10 thousand years was the relatively recent eruption of Tambor (in Indonesia) in 1815, with a volume of more than 100 cubic kilometers.
Recent studies give reason to increase the power of the Minoan eruption of Thera almost doubled - up to 60 cubic kilometers. In this case, Santorini is the second most powerful eruption on Earth in the last 5 thousand years. The ashes of the eruption of Thera spread over a vast territory. It was found in Egypt, Turkey, the Middle East, on the northern coast of the Black Sea. On Santorini itself, the ash layer in some places exceeds 50 meters. The eruption (its ash obscuring the sunlight) produced the largest freezing temperature anomaly of the 2nd millennium BC. in the northern hemisphere.
Marinatos himself suggested a connection between the giant eruption of the Minoan era and the death of Atlantis. But at the same time he considered the island of Crete itself to be Atlantis - the main center of Minoan culture, on which by that time the remains of magnificent palaces and cities of the Bronze Age had already been excavated. In Santorini itself, the archeology of that period was still in its infancy. Subsequent discoveries force us to reconsider this view.
In 1967, Marinatos began excavations in the south of Santorini, near the small village of Akrotiri. Almost immediately under the layer of volcanic ash, a well-preserved Minoan settlement with stone two-story houses, straight streets, an excellent water supply and sewerage system was discovered. This find became a kind of "Minoan Pompey" and one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the 20th century.
As archaeological excavations and the study of the geology of Santorini have proceeded, more and more details of the similarity of Santorini with Plato's description have emerged.
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Coincidences of Santorini with Plato's description of Atlantis
1) According to Plato, the capital of Atlantis was located in the middle of a large plain and was a set of concentric rings of water (dug channels) and earth. In the very center, on the island separated by a circular channel, there were the main buildings - temples, the royal palace, port facilities, etc. The size of the outer ring (translated from Greek measures - stages) was about 20 km. The reconstructed form of Santorini before the Minoan eruption is a roughly circular ring with a diameter of about 20 km, inside which there is a large harbor (the caldera itself) and in the middle of it - a smaller island.
2) This is confirmed by images from Akrotiri. Frescoes found in the ancient settlement depict dolphins, playing with bulls, boxing boys, smartly dressed women with exquisite decorations, as well as ships and houses. In particular, the famous fresco called "Flotilla" depicts an island with multi-storey buildings around which there are waterways or canals, and on the outside there is a land with mountains, animals and trees. There are many ships of different types in the harbor - evidence of the intense international trade developed during the Minoan period.
3) The description mentions the predominant colors of Atlandis - white, black and red. These are the colors that really dominate Santorini. Among the most popular beaches on the modern island are those that are called so - "white", "black" and "red", where different types of volcanic rock prevail.
4) Plato wrote that high mountains protected Atlantis from cold winds from the north. Indeed, the highest mountains were located in the northeast and undoubtedly protected the interior of the island from strong winter winds (really cold for these latitudes).
5) Among the animals in Atlantis, bulls (with whom the Atlanteans performed sacrificial rituals), dolphins, deer, as well as elephants are mentioned. Bulls were central to Minoan culture, rituals and sports. Dolphins and deer are depicted in many Minoan frescoes. Elephants were unlikely to be found on the islands of the Aegean, but the Minoans actively traded ivory throughout the Mediterranean (in fact, the Egyptians imported ivory only through them).
Inconsistencies between Atlantis and Minoan Thera
a) Plato placed it outside the "Pillars of Hercules", ie. presumably Gibraltar. I must say that the geography of the western Mediterranean was still poorly understood during the time of Solon, and even more so during the Bronze Age. "Hercules" in Greece was replaced by "Atlas", in particular the "Atlas Mountains" of the northern coast of Africa, considered one of the "rooftops of the world" supported by the Atlanteans. The Pillars of Hercules could actually simply mean "the far west." Crete and Santorini were indeed on the western edge of the world known to the Egyptians.
Another version of where the name “Pillars of Hercules” came from is associated with the cult structures of the Minoans - large stone columns and steles on the top of the mountains, which also “supported the sky”, which was later transformed into Greek mythology about the Atlanteans (atlases, Hercules).
b) Atlantis, according to the description, was a whole continent, “larger than Libya and Asia” (ie, the Anatolian Peninsula). But this could be a translation mistake, a confusion of the words of the ancient Egyptian words "meson" and "meson" - "more" and "between". Thus, Atlantis could be no more, but be between Libya and Asia Minor, which really corresponds to the geographical position of Crete and the Cyclades.
But we have not yet reached the main question - did the eruption of Thera really ruin the Minoan civilization? The original eruption was dated to about 1500 BC, which was in good agreement with the idea of the decline of the Minoan culture and its conquest by the Mycenaeans around 1450 BC. But subsequent research forced to seriously revise this date. The time interval of the eruption was shifted between 1640-1600 BC, with dendrochronological analysis showing the most likely date in 1628.
Thus, almost 200 years passed between the explosion of Santorini and the decline of Minoan culture. The eruption, despite its enormous power and catastrophic destruction, was not the cause of the decline of civilization. Despite the enormous destruction, the Cretans and the inhabitants of other islands (except Santorini itself) immediately began to restore palaces, temples and other structures. After 20-30 years, almost no trace of the disaster remained.
Does this mean that the eruption of Santorini was still not the prototype of the legend of Atlantis? Of course not. Too many factors point to a link between the two events. The explosion of Santorini was indeed a huge catastrophe that caused numerous destruction - the largest natural disaster in the Mediterranean in the 2nd millennium BC. The memory of this event remained for many centuries, even in places far from the epicenter of the disaster. But this explosion was not the end of the entire civilization, because the Minoan culture was in a phase of ascent and could overcome the consequences of the cataclysm.