headed a group of European researchers who revealed a new finding according to which a devastating tsunami hit the island of Crete in the Aegean Sea during the Minoan civilization about 3.500 years ago, coinciding with the volcanic eruption in nearby Santorini
In the abstract of the scientific article, as it appeared in Science, Bruins and seven of his colleagues - all from respected universities in Europe - write that the huge eruption of the volcano on the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea during the second millennium BC was the major volcanic event of the Holocene period in the Eastern Mediterranean region. The eruption was disastrous for the Minoan settlements in Santorini, but the way the disaster affected the inhabitants of islands and nearby areas is still unknown. The hypothesis of the creation of the tsunami was proposed but had little evidence. The lack of solid evidence of a tsunami is a puzzle mainly in Crete, where coastal settlements appeared at the end of the Minoan period. The eruption in Santorini.
The article includes a report on sediments created as a result of a geo-archaeological tsunami event in Palaigastro in northeastern Crete. These sediments are characterized by a mixture of geological materials including volcanic ash from Santorini and archaeological remains of sword villages left from settlements.
The researchers discovered several signatures of the tsunami: erosion of the layer and the exposure of the foundation layer below it, volcanic ash mixed in the lower layer of the building stones that were used for reconstruction after the disaster in the lower parts of the sediments, personal belongings, marine shells, microscopic marine animals, overlap between beach pebbles, settlement remains , ceramic shields and even bones, a chaotic multi-style collection.
The late Minoan settlements that operated in Palaikastro provide an archaeological and stratigraphic framework (sorting the layers of the earth's crust and determining their age) in space and time that recorded and preserved the evidence of the tsunami as geoarchaeological sediments. Such a stratigraphic result and preservation cannot occur in a natural landscape. The volcanic ash carried by the wind from the southeast coast of Santorini to Crete preceded the tsunami.
Geological, archaeological, and carbon dating of the event all converge to indicate that the tsunami findings coincide in time with the eruption of the Santorini volcano. Evidence from the excavations in the area lead the scientists to hypothesize that the tsunami waves in Palaikastro were at least 9 meters high. However, tsunami models and the extent of the damage it caused raise the bar to a higher height, it is possible that there were also waves 35 meters high, and they were the ones that subdued the coastal cities.
The evidence in the area of the creation of the event in Santorini that has been preserved so far in stratigraphic evidence indicates that it was an eruption that raised boiling lava to a height of 15 kilometers.
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Precise and direct dating of the Minoan eruption of Santorini (Thera) in Greece, a global Bronze Age time marker, has been made possible by the unique find of an olive tree, buried alive in life position by the tephra (pumice and ashes) on Santorini. We applied so-called radiocarbon wiggle-matching to a carbon-14 sequence of tree-ring segments to constrain the eruption date to the range 1627-1600 BC with 95.4% probability. Our result is in the range of previous, less precise, and less direct results of several scientific dating methods, but it is a century earlier than the date derived from traditional Egyptian chronologies
Precise and direct dating of the Minoan eruption of Santorini (Thera) in Greece, a global Bronze Age time marker, has been made possible by the unique find of an olive tree, buried alive in life position by the tephra (pumice and ashes) on Santorini. We applied so-called radiocarbon wiggle-matching to a carbon-14 sequence of tree-ring segments to constrain the eruption date to the range 1627-1600 BC with 95.4% probability. Our result is in the range of previous, less precise, and less direct results of several scientific dating methods, but it is a century earlier than the date derived from traditional Egyptian chronologies
About 10 years ago I heard a learned lecture from the late Dr. Lucy Fletman about the effect of the tsunami on the coast of Egypt, the fall of the pharaohs' regime as a result for a period of time until they managed to take control of Egypt again.
The tsunami wave that washed over the coast of Egypt - the delta, continued up the Nile almost to Luxor - 600 km from Cairo, and there is geological evidence of this, from this I learned that the huge wave was in the direction of Egypt and not like a stagnation of water created as a result of a stone hitting the water which is circular.
That means there was an explosion and its direction was south.
So what I hear here for the first time is that the scholar and researcher found evidence of this in Crete, nice.
A few comments to the things posted here:
A. Indeed the dating of the event is problematic (there are disagreements of about 1600 years). However, the evidence that Bruins points to certainly looks like the result of a tsunami around the same time period, with a likely connection to the end of the Minoan culture. The link to Thera is still a bit weak, but seems like a reasonable explanation. This does indeed create a pretty serious chronological mess, but the entire chronology of the Eastern Mediterranean needs to be re-examined in light of the new research (eg the low chronology from Finkelstein's seminary, the weak points of the Middle Holocene, the definition of the early Islamic period, etc.).
B. Regarding Cook McCook's comment - so far we know that the Minoan culture collapsed "suddenly", in an event that leaves archaeologists with many questions. Everyone knows that, contrary to Dan Thorn's poem, empires do not actually fall slowly, but the Minoan collapse is a surprising event in its power. On the other hand, we also know about the eruption of Thera around the same time, hence the probable link between the two events. The contribution of Bruins and his colleagues is that they found evidence of a tsunami (which may have originated from an eruption) in the association of the end of the Minoan culture (although this is not a completely unequivocal association. Dating is a bit of a sensitive point when it comes to Bruins' work). Either way, this is a real innovation - the first real link between Thera, a tsunami and a cultural crisis.
What will we be? I saw a program that described what is described here a year and a half ago on the History Channel... what's new?
It reminds me of the story about the carpenter and the carpenter...
As far as I know, dating the eruption using methods from the natural sciences (dendrochronology, ice cores) creates serious problems for the accepted Aegean-Egyptian chronology. Do we discuss this in the new article?
Well done !! There are people who do and not only talk about themselves on the science website regardless of their achievements in reality or original ideas! (referring to the commenters) (certain)
It would have been desirable to mention the names of his research "colleagues" and the places from which they work...it would have added and not detracted!