Atlantis
- The Lost Land Hypothesis and the Cataclysmic Mass Edifice Failure
of the Volcano of Santorin in the Bronze Age
George
Pararas-Carayannis
Abstract
and excerpts of a paper prepared for the International Conference:
The Atlantis Hypothesis: Searching for a Lost Land, 11 - 13 July
2005, Milos Island, Greece
ABSTRACT
 The legend of the Lost Continent
of Atlantis originated with Solon the Athenian lawmaker follwing
his vist to Egypt in the 7th Century B.C. The only source of
this legend can be found in Plato's Dialogs of Timaeus and Critias.
The catastrophic explosion
and collapse of the stratovolcano of Santorin in the Bronze Age
was the only large scale natural disaster in recent geologic
time which could have been known to the early Egyptians and Greeks
and which - in all probability - inspired Plato's legend of Atlantis
and his incomplete account of the "lost land" in the
Critias dialog.
Excerpt from original
description of Atlantis by Kritias in Plato's dialogs in which
he describes Poseidon's allocation of Atlantis to five sets of
twins he had with a mortal woman and the establishent of the
oldest as King "Atlas"(in Ancient Greek)
This disaster was
associated with massive volcanic edifice failures, enormous shock
waves, extensive volcanic ash falls, and the generation of destructive
tsunamis. The combined effects of the disaster had an unprecedented
and legendary impact on the known early world, but particularly
in the Eastern Mediterranean and Egyptian societies - the latter
memorialized with Biblical interpretations.
The disaster and its
associated phenomena resulted in the immediate destruction of
major Minoan settlements on Santorin, Crete and other Aegean
islands and precipitated the rapid declination of the advanced
Minoan civilization - the "Atlantis" of that period.
Furthermore, Santorin's explosion had a global impact on climate
which was far greater than that of the 1883 explosion of the
Krakatau volcano in Indonesia.
Excerpt from
Timaeus in Plato's dialog describing the destruction, disappearance
and sinking of the Island of Atlantis in one single day and night
after a series of earthquakes and cataclysms (in Ancient Greek)
Remnant
of Minoan Palace at Knossos on the Island of Crete
Based on existing
geologic data, the present study explains the complex geodynamic
and kinematic changes that contributed to the instability of
Santorin and reconstructs the chain of events that culminated
with the volcano's mass edifice failures in the Bronze age, around
1645 B.C..
Satellite Photo of
Santorin
Extensive loss of
land associated with this disaster resulted from outward crustal
spreading, a series of Plinian and ultra-Plinian explosions,
a massive multi-phase caldera collapse, and from flank failures
- processes which have occurred repeatedly throughout Santorin's
long geologic history.
Synergistically-acting,
triggering mechanisms contributed to the de-stabilization processes
and to a sequence of deformational events that resulted in Santorin's
edifice failures before, during, and after the Bronze Age eruptions.
A large scale land
mass loss resulted from structural instability and the multiphase
caldera collapse into the empty magmatic chambers which followed
the paroxysmal explosions of the volcano.
Additional massive
volcanic edifice loss occurred from lateral blasts, basal decollement,
ring dike collapses, and from gravitationally-induced, sector
or slope failures which resulted in aerial and submarine landslides,
rock falls and debris avalanches.
 The massive flank failures were
triggered by volcanic earthquakes caused by rising magma in feeder
dikes, by lava dome and magmatic chamber collapses and, possibly,
by one or more tectonic earthquakes along the same thrust fault
in the NNW-SSE trending seismic zone that transverses the Southern
Aegean region - where a devastating earthquake occurred as recently
as 1956.
The cataclysmic Bronze
Age eruptions of Santorin and the associated massive edifice
failures, altered significantly the pre-Minoan morphology of
the island - thus giving birth to the legend of the lost land
of Atlantis.
Vent development
and caldera collapse during the four phases of the Minoan eruption
of the Volcano of Santorin (after Heiken and McCoy, 1984).
Southern Santorin
from Cape Akrotiri to Cape Exomiti -Region of Mass Edifice Failures
Along Ring Dikes - Site of Partially Submerged Minoan Metropolis
Inside Santorin's
Caldera - Wiew of town of Phira on rim of the caldera
See also:
The
Tsunami Generated from the Eruption of the Volcano of Santorin
in the Bronze Age
The
Waves That Destroyed the Minoan Empire (Atlantis)
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