Write about the events of a devastating natural disaster in your world, either past or present.

— Law

The Volcanic Destruction of Thera

Around 1600 BCE, on a Tuesday afternoon, one of the largest volcanic events in human history obliterated the Agaean island of Thera. The ensuing earthquakes and tsunamis wiped cities off the map and led to the decline of the then-dominant Minoan Civilization.
This eruption and its aftermath allowed Mycenaean Greece to expand into the power void, to conquer Crete, and to set up the history of Western Civilization as we know it.

Background

The Thera volcano had erupted several times over hundreds of thousands of years, but never before within human memory. It was a ticking time-bomb that the Minoans didn't see coming.

A Chain of Disasters

At the time, the Minoans were a seafaring civilization of coastal cities on Crete and other islands in the Agaean. The tsunamis not only swamped the cities and wrecked their ports, it also destroyed the ships that people depended on for their livelihood. Depopulation and economic devastation then led to invasion from the opportunistic armies of the Mycenaeans.
One disaster led to another, which led to another, in a chain that started with a volcano and ended with the collapse of an entire civilization.
Climate impacts from the eruption were recorded in tree rings across the Northern Hemisphere, and in the written records of China, where the Bamboo Annals recorded 1618 BCE as a year of yellow fog, dim sun, frost in July, the withering of cereal crops, and the fall of the Xia Dynasty. The Shang Dynasty would rise to take its place.

Thera in Mythology

Events at Thera may have influenced Plato's legend of Atlantis, an advanced island that vanished into the sea, and Hesiod's myth of the Titanomachy, a battle between Titans and Olympians that includes volcanic and explosive imagery.

Thera Today

The island of Thera today is called Santorini, and still bears a caldera from the violent explosion from over 3600 years ago. The entire center of the island is missing, as if large bites have been taken out of it.

Santorini island, Greece by NASA

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History

Minoan, Cycladic

Type

Natural

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