New Ice-Core Evidence Challenges the 1620s age for the Santorini (Minoan) Eruption

That's the abstract, which is viewable online with little effort, the full paper requires subscription. The paper itself shouldn't be too surprising in content, since the claim that the purported eruption on Thera is recorded in the ice cores was never based on anything but pure supposition and blind belief.

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Here's a link to the other message I'd posted on this:

50 Ancient Tombs Uncovered (1400BC, Crete)

"Although these findings do not unequivocally discount the 1620s age, we recommend that 1628/1627 no longer be held as the "definitive" age for the Santorini eruption."

Good info...I notice they didn't assign a new date to the Santorini eruption.

I wonder what caused the 1628 ice core spike?

Interesting.

I, too, wonder. Could be from an eruption anywhere in the world. Hawaii area comes to mind at once.

I wonder what caused the 1628 ice core spike?

And all the others...

The truth of the matter is quite simple. There was once only one sulphur spike great enough to match Thera because budgetary restraints on the ice core work meant that such peaks had not been systematically looked for. Second millennium ice cores have now been searched more thoroughly, and there are peaks of sulphuric acid easily enough to match Thera (which vulcanologists say was not the kind of eruption to shoot out that much sulphur anyway), at NUMEROUS dates within the 18th, 17th, 16th, 15th, 14th centuries BC (see Zielinski et al in Science 264, 1994, pp. 948-952). The REAL FACTS show not only how pathetic is the case for the 17th-century proxy dating...

[T]here is now concrete evidence that the 17th-century ice core event COULD NOT have had anything to do with Thera. See Zielinski and Germani: "New Ice-Core Evidence Challenges the 1620s BC Age for the Santorini (Minoan) Eruption", Journal of Archaeological Science 25 (1998), pp. 279-289. In short, glassy volcanic material has now been analysed from the 1620s ice core layers. It was immediately compared with material from Thera and, in the words of the investigators, it "is very much different". Their conclusion:
"Although we cannot completely rule out the possibility that two nearly coincident eruptions, including the Santorini eruption, are responsible for the 1623 BC signal in the GISP ice core, these results very much suggest that the Santorini eruption is not responsible for this signal. We believe that another eruption led not only to the 1623 BC ice core signal but also, by correlation, to the tree-ring signals at 1628/1627 BC."
So there you have it. An opinion straight from the mouth of ice-core scientists which happens to agree, strangely enough with what vulcanologists have been saying and also cautious well-informed archaeologists like Professor Peter Warren of Bristol University who is AWARE of the problems inherent in "scientific" dating methods and has for years been lecturing and publishing caution about proxy dating.

[from "Re: When did Thera Erupt?", Peter James, reply to a discussion thread on an unknown e-list. Obtained via email from Ev Cochrane]

On a Yahoo group ("New Chronology") devoted to David Rohl, one member (Robert Porter) pointed out that the ice core tephra from Greenland matches a volcano in Alaska, Aniakchak [G3: Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems: An Electronic Journal of the Earth Sciences; "Identification of Aniakchak (Alaska) tephra in Greenland ice core challenges the 1645 BC date for Minoan eruption of Santorini", Pearce et al. abstract].

Here's a sidebar, regarding radiocarbon dating, from the other pole:

A researcher in Antarctica uncovered a dead seal and wanted to get it carbon dated. It appeared fresh and he wondered how old it was. It dated to 1200 AD (plus or minus whatever). As he had subsequent dead seal finds carbon dated, all of them came out to 1200 AD. At first he thought he had some kind of sudden, unexplained seal die-off from approximately that year. Then he had another seal that he'd killed himself carbon dated in an effort to calibrate the dating... I saw this info in a 1985 interview with Barry Fell, in Horus vol II no 1, a journal published by David Griffard. Alas, DG went down in a private plane after the seventh issue.:

"We learned that seals were coming to a bad end and being mummified by nature in Antarctica in 1200 A.D. That was interesting and we wondered what was happening in Antarctica at that time...one of the technicians... noticed that a seal carcass that he himself had shot for dog-meat and that got left out through the winter... [looked] just like the mummified seals that they had been sending in. So without telling too many people what he was doing, he sent this mummified seal to be carbon-dated and do you know it was dated to 1200 A.D., and he had shot it the year before. When that was made public it really caused a storm."

Similarly...

Ancient Modern Life And Carbon Dating
by William R. Corliss
Primordial carbon may come from limestone or natural gas welling up from the earth's interior. Modern life forms that metabolize primordial rather than atmospheric carbon dioxide, with its cosmic-ray produced carbon-14, will appear extremely old when carbon-dated. Mice eating such apparently ancient life forms at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, California, were carbon-dated as being 13,000 years old, and were expected to attain a ripe old age of 35,000 in a few months.

and now, from proxy dating I turn to proxy quoting (':

"From Thera itself came carbonized tree trunk, still rooted in Minoan soil at the bottom of the Fira quarry." "The carbon-14 verdict from the Fira quarry trees was that life on the island had ended in the seventeenth century B.C. - about 1640>, give or take thirty years in either direction." [Charles Pellegrino, Unearthing Atlantis (1991) p. 233]

this, regarding a big mutha of an eruption -- in prehistoric times.

Marine tephra from the Cape Riva eruption (22 ka) of Santorini in the Sea of Marmara
S. Wulf, M. Kraml, T. Kuhn,
M. Schwarz, M. Inthorn, J. Keller,
I. Kuscu, and P. Halbach
[Abstract] A discrete tephra layer has been discovered in three marine sediment cores from the Sea of Marmara, eastern Mediterranean. The rhyodacitic glass chemistry and the stratigraphical position suggest a Santorini provenance and, in particular, a correlation with the marine Y-2 tephra that is known from the southern Aegean Sea and eastern Levantine Basin. This tephra represents the distal facies of the Cape Riva eruption of Santorini, which has been dated by 14C on land at 21950 cal. yr BP. Hitherto, the Y-2 tephra has been detected only in marine sediment cores recovered south to southeast of its volcanic source. The new occurrence in the Sea of Marmara approximately 530 km NNE of the Santorini eruptive centre suggests a more north-easterly dispersal of fallout products of the Cape Riva eruption than previously supposed.
Santorini, Greece
Santorini is complex of overlapping shield volcanoes. Basalt and andesite lava flows that make the shield are exposed in the cliff below the town of Phira. Some of the cliff is thought to be a caldera wall associated with an eruption 21,000 year ago. Druitt and Francaviglia (1992) found evidence of at least 12 large explosive eruptions in the last 200,000 years at Santorin i...

Akroteri, a Minoan city on the south part of Thera, is being excavated. About 3-6 feet (1-2 m) of ash fell on the city which had a population of about 30,000. The residents appear to have been successfully evacuated prior to the eruption. No bodies have been found in the ash like those at Vesuvius. Archeologists also reported that movable objects had been taken from the city...

The Kameni Islands formed after the caldera. Eleven eruptions since 197 B.C. have made the two islands. The most recent eruption at Santorini was in 1950 on Nea Kameni, the northern island. The eruption was phreatic and lasted less than a month. It constructed a dome and produced lava flows.

It should be noted that the "eruption destroyed the Minoans" school has persistently exaggerated the amount of crud covering Akrotiri, claiming as much as 100 feet of ash. Not that they were lyin' er anything... Here's an example:

Akrotiri And The Santorini Volcano
1999 (from the Web Archive)
The final deposition of tephra (volcanic ash) attributable to this eruptional sequence is over five meters thick at Akrotiri but up to fifty meters thick elsewhere on Thera and includes large boulders of basalt in addition to the lighter and smaller bits of pumice which themselves now measure as much as fifteen centimeters across. There is no archaeological evidence for how long the full series of eruptions lasted, but vulcanologists have reached a consensus that the process was a fairly rapid, hence short-lived one. The absence of any clear signs of erosion at the preserved tops of the ruins of Akrotiri supports the notion that complete burial of these ruins followed close upon the heels of the events which produced the ruins in the first place, that is, the initial stages of the eruption.

The town was abandoned (little if anything was left behind) probably due to earthquakes, and buried under 16 feet or less of ash. That author's "five meters" is a bit of hyperbole I believe -- I've seen figures of three meters for the average depth of coverage. And Akrotiri was right on the crater.

There are deeper ash layers elsewhere on the island, but not necessarily associated with the same eruption that buried the town.

Hope this helps.

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:')

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Found a bit more. :')

Bronze Age Myths?
Volcanic Activity and Human Response
in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic Region
Paul C. Buckland
Andrew J. Dugmore
Kevin J. Edwards
Antiquity Vol. 71 (1997), pp. 581-593.
A first rule of statistics is that the existence of a correlation does not itself prove a causal connection... This paper examines some of the available evidence for these two Bronze Age 'catastrophes', the one real and in need of a calendar date, the other hypothesized on archaeological grounds and dated by a tenuous link through tree rings to an Icelandic volcano... Despite several cautionary comments from both archaeologists (Manning 1988; Warren 1988) and geologists (Pyle 1989; 1990), the 1628 BC date, or one close to it, continues to be accepted (e.g. Michael and Betancourt 1988), without questioning why the effects of the Santorini eruption should be especially recognizable in the ice-core and tree-ring sequences. Large-scale explosive volcanic activity is common on a global scale (Zielinski et al. 1996), and so before accepting the possibility that the Santorini eruption can be recognized by unusual perturbations in the regional records of ice-cores or tree-rings, the case for its distinctive character must be proved.
The Thera (Santorini) Volcanic Eruption and
the Absolute Chronology of the Aegean Bronze Age
by Sturt W. Manning
...It is argued that the key Late Minoan IA period, the high point of the Minoan civilisation, was not, as conventionally held, contemporary (even in part) with the New Kingdom (18th Dynasty) of Egypt, nor the Late Bronze 1 phase of the Levant. Instead, the Late Minoan IA period in the Aegean is linked with the late Middle Bronze Age of Syria-Palestine, the Second Intermediate (Hyksos) Period of Egypt, and the Late Cypriot IA period of Cyprus. This is an important realignment of cultural synchronisations. The high point of Crete should be considered in terms of the dominant Canaanite trading system of the late Middle Bronze Age, and not New Kingdom Egypt...

Appendix 2: Why the standard chronologies are approximately correct, and why radical re-datings are therefore incorrect.

Interestingly enough, Manning cites Lesson 17: Akrotiri on Thera which, while it toes the line regarding the current dating fictions, also notes that:

"More recently, the vulcanologists have claimed that the Santorini caldera formed quite gradually and that a tidal wave, if indeed there was one at all, would not have been on anything like the scale envisaged by Marinatos and other proponents of the link between the Theran volcano and the sudden decline of Neopalatial Crete."

Gotta go for now.

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Santorini caldera formed quite gradually and that a tidal wave, if indeed there was one at all, would not have been on anything like the scale envisaged by Marinatos and other proponents of the link between the Theran volcano and the sudden decline of Neopalatial Crete."

Really? That is going to send us all back to the drawing board.

"Santorini caldera formed quite gradually and that a tidal wave, if indeed there was one at all, would not have been on anything like the scale envisaged by Marinatos and other proponents of the link between the Theran volcano and the sudden decline of Neopalatial Crete." "

I just saw (two weeks ago) a new one hour long documentary on the Thera eruption and their data on the tsunamis that swept 'over' Crete and ended the Minoian(sp) civilization. They dated the tsunamis and the Thera eruption at 1645.

I think the 'jury' is still out.

Nah. ;')

I'm a staunch catastrophist, have been for as long as I've been aware of any difference, but have never bought the idea of the huge Thera eruption ending the Minoans. As an idea it has been around in some form since the 1930s I believe, and Carl Blegen (excavated Troy and Pylos I think) et al found evidence of widespread natural disaster that was basically simultaneous (regardless of the chronology used, if ya get my drift) in the eastern Mediterranean.

Even in the Iliad ongoing natural disaster can be seen here and there (rivers overflowing their banks, earthquakes, tsunamis), coinciding with the Trojan War. And Thucydides refers to many an earthquake, tsunami, whatnot during the Peloponesian War (sp?).

...more when I get home...

[bookmark for myself http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1181406/posts]

R. Shand is generally reliable on quotes (as far as their being verbatim) but generally unreliable on interpretation (which occasionally are themselves quotes; one I noticed had to do with taphonomy). He reports (iow, doesn't originate) one hypothesis about the origin of the Atlantis story, claiming that this passage indicates an island with a similar name was destroyed along with its garrison "in a single day and single night" as Plato has Atlantis being destroyed:

The History of the Peloponnesian War
by Thucydides
tr. Richard Crawley
The Internet Classics Archive
Daniel C. Stevenson
"A similar inundation also occurred at Atalanta, the island off the Opuntian Locrian coast, carrying away part of the Athenian fort and wrecking one of two ships which were drawn up on the beach. At Peparethus also the sea retreated a little, without however any inundation following; and an earthquake threw down part of the wall, the town hall, and a few other buildings. The cause, in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where its shock has been the most violent, the sea is driven back and, suddenly recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen."

Thucydides and Plato (sole ancient source of the Atlantis story) were nearly contemporary (Thucydides was somewhat older). Atalanta was a small, uninhabited island during Thucydides' time, was seized and fortified by the Athenians during the war, and suffered from a small tidal wave caused by an offshore earthquake. Even in the original it is clear that the association between the two phenomena is understood. At no time did this small island have a huge empire or even a large city, at least according to the ancient author cited. ;')

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Zangger discusses the long history (circa 1885, much earlier than I'd thought) of the "Thera was Atlantis" idea, and beginning on page 44 cuts it to ribbons. It should be noted that Zangger has his own book about what was and wasn't Atlantis. ;') Check out pp 48-49 for a summary of the problems with the idea, and an amusing catalog of other things attributed to the eruption.

I bought this book in May, and having started it up tonight with some cherry picking, it looks like something I'm going to read in entire.

The Future of the Past
Archaeology in the 21st Century
by Eberhard Zangger

I'm a staunch catastrophist

That's what we love about you Civ.

;') And yet, I subscribe to the view that the Moon was captured (which would have catastrophic effects, however) rather than born of an impact, but you've heard me hold court on that one before. :'D

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Bump for Velikovsky outlasting ..Carl [Parrot one liner quote] Sagan,...or

Catastrophism makes simple sense of things : )

Was reflecting on something..after googling up on the moon/Arcadia.

So ya...Velikovsky lists out the Ancient notaries who ref varied peoples who existed..and where *Ancient...before there was a moon.

We have some ref material to work with concerning the Sumerians.....Sitchen is a resource too..but the concern of his potential spin on words..and his theology construct.

note:

In his Sumerian Etymological Dictionary and Comparative Grammar, Kálmán Gosztony, professor of Sumerian philology at the Sorbonne, demonstrated that the grammatical structure of the Hungarian language is the closest to that of the Sumerian language: out of the 53 characteristics of Sumerian grammar, there are 51 matching characteristics in the Hungarian language, 29 in the Turkic languages, 24 in the Caucasian languages, 21 in the Uralic languages, 5 in the Semitic languages, and 4 in the Indo-European languages. [*]

The Sumerian as a *post Catastrophism/migration reality?
the debate....showed up fully fledged in social net around 4000 BC....some comment they could go back to 8000 BC in some social form.

connected to this is the Accadians with their God *El.

So ya..the Moses period and the Law..El ref God can do...ie El-ohim..El -Shaddia etc.
amazing that this foundation /view would remain so long after the break up of the Sumerians.

just how far back does the Worship of El go?

all these fragments are tantalizing....
Several Ancient Hebrew works Redactly comment about Migration....Catastrophism is not really front and centre in the works though.
The Redactl seems to be focused/lofted upon keeping the societal Bond with *El Alive..accompanied by teaching construct.

Too bad the Library in Alexandria was destroyed...3 times?..anyhoo..there must have been ancient notary there...stuff Bronze age period would see as Ancient and mythological.

From where I sit...there does seem to be a reality of societal structure going way back....and yet...it has this rise/fall reality...with migration.
The Moon is something in the mix of all this....ie..no moon..then a moon.

I imagine impactors are part and parcell of the equation too.

Of note...The Mythological name assigned to Tiahuanaco -is City of the Falling Moon. : )

I used to virtually hang out with 'Gringo' on the Globe (a defunct forum system) whose real name is, well, that's not important. He's got a book out in a new edition, and lives in a predominantly Moslem country, so let's skip his real name. We used to email back and forth a bit, and regarding a public discussion of the Rudgley book, he wrote:

"The archaeologist in the Rudgley book got involved in researching clay figures that are found in the thousands all over Mesopotamian and other Middle Eastern sites dating from 8,000 to 6,000 BC. These are little clay geometric shapes, sometimes with odd markings, and later become a bit more complex, in shapes of animals, etc.

"It turns out that these were an early accounting system, as she discovered when she came across a clay 'envelope': a kind of egg-shaped jar containing about 26 of these clay tokens, with an inscription on the jar enumerating them and what they represented. (She calls it her 'Rosetta Stone'.)

"With some further research she was able to show how these geometric clay tokens came to be represented by line drawings that imitated their original shape as the ancient accountants (about as swift as their present day counterparts) eventually, after like thousands of years, realized they could use a two-dime method of counting sheep and wheat rather than the more cumbersome three-dime method."

Slight ping, not from a list per se, merely to those who have posted to or been posted to in this topic.

Zangger writes of getting talked into participation in research about the supposed mighty Thera eruption, caldera collapse, and tsunami. He and a colleague looked over Thera, found no sign of such a massive eruption, not even significant earthquake damage. Furthermore, the Minoans cities and towns (including a palace) on the northern coast of Crete show no damage -- apart from fire. The thickest layer of Theran ash on Crete (the eastern end) is 5 millimeters. On Rhodes the ash is as much as 60 centimeters, but there is no sign of abandonment of Rhodes thereafter. [pp 35-46]

The Future of the Past:
Archaeology in the 21st Century
by Eberhard Zangger

Austrian archaeologists in their excavations at Auaris on the Nile Delta have actually found a large quantity of pumice stone, which undoubtedly came from Thera. The stratification of the layers in which the pumice stone was found indicates a time around 1500 BC, between the reign-periods of the pharaohs Ahmose and Thutmosis III. [pp 50-51]

The Minoan ash and pumice layers are, by comparison, decidedly thin, and, in addition, they do not by any means cover the whole of the island group. [p 297]

Pumice floats; contrary to what some seemed to have claimed, there do not exist cubic kilometers of pumice stone from Thera; the ashfall is generally believed to have been carried SE by the winds.

Addenda and Corrections to "The Exodus Chronicles"
by Marianne Luban
Recently, in relation to his ongoing excavation at Tell el Daba, which he believes to be the site of ancient Avaris, Manfred Bietak has rescinded his former assertion that the stratum in which Minoan artifacts, decorations and volcanic pumice were discovered belongs to the time of the pharaoh, Ahmose I. Bietak now concludes this stratum can be assigned to the reign of Thutmose III, instead. Bietak also dates the eruption of Thera to ca. 1500 BCE, in light of his new theory, and takes issue with those who place the cataclysmic event to about 130 years earlier. In brief, Bietak now wishes to eliminate any chronological problems connected with his newer theory. Even if he is correct and there was no volcanic blast in the Aegean at the time of King Ahmose, there still remains the unaccountably bad weather and flooding during his reign, as recorded by himself.

And then there is the interesting premise of the Thera volcano devastation while a "Tethmosis" was pharaoh, two disasters having then occurred within a half century--or less.

IOW, this supposed huge eruption left its traces far more recently than the 1620s BC. Here are some of Bietak's Minoan finds, from "Minoan Wall-Paintings unearthed at Ancient Avaris":

Gallery 1
Gallery 2
Gallery 3

Minoan art was widely popular during the heyday of that civilization. Here's a formerly prosperous site with a history of occupation stretching from the Middle Kingdom, through the Hyksos / 2nd IP, into the New Kingdom.

Helmi, Ezbet
Formerly called Tell el-Qirqafa. Amsterdam University survey of 1984 noted the presence of a quartzite block in the village, measuring 100 x (75+) x 17cm, pierced by a central square shaft. This site was probably the location of the Djadu of the 12th dynasty, found by Labib Habachi. Now the site is the focus of a major excavation by the Austrian Institute, working under cultivated fields some 800 metres west of their excavations at Tell ed-Daba. Major discoveries include Minoan wall paintings, an Eighteenth Dynasty palace, a Hyksos palace and water-supply system.

I thought you were hanging out with me at the Globe!
Who is gringo, really? You can tell me.......

Gringo was someone I hung out with also. :')