Saturday, September 15, 2012

In the Greek archipelago called the Cyclades: the explosive story of Santorini

Santorini, classically called Thera, is an island in the southern Aegean Sea, about 120 mi southeast from Greece's mainland.

It is the southernmost member of the Cyclades group of islands, says Wikipedia.

Santorini is what remains after an enormous volcanic explosion that destroyed the earliest settlements on a formerly single island, and created the current geological caldera.

The island is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history: the Minoan eruption (sometimes called the Thera eruption), which occurred some 3600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization.

The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of metres deep and may have led indirectly to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, 110 km (68 mi) to the south, through a gigantic tsunami.

Another popular theory holds that the Thera eruption is the source of the legend of Atlantis.[3]

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