Time for Vulcanologists, Time for Archaeologists
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I am not quite sure it is very convenient to print and circulate the paper I had prepared for the Thera congress, as now it will take a long time before meeting our Colleagues and discussing the points with them. So I feel it is more appropriate just to list the main questions I intended to put forward, and to let these interrogations find their way into the opinion of scientists.
TO VULCANOLOGISTS:
- Independently of any archaeological information, what are the exact data you get about the chronology of the Thera explosion, the duration of the phenomenon, its preliminary warnings - if there were any - , the extent of the disaster on the Mediterranean shores, the length of time which elapsed before any real recovering?
- What is the error estimate for your answers to the above questions?
- Are you able to determine any range for the possible extent of the disaster on the Mediterranean shores and lands by a kind of simulation, taking into consideration geography, hypsometry and bathymetry, coastal orientations or configurations, wave interferences, and so on? With what degree of certainty?
TO ARCHAEOLOGISTS:
- Independently of any presupposition towards the possible human consequences of the Thera explosions, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc. what are the actual clues for the breaks or "ruptures" you found during the 2nd millenium B.C. in the archaeological sequences of Cretan or Aegean civilization? Are some of them clearly linked with any volcanic process?
- What are the datation, duration and extent of these breaks, on purely archaeological grounds?
- What kind of approximation are you compelled to admit when answering the above questions?
TO HISTORIANS:
After studying the answers to all those questions given by vulcanologists and archaeologists, do you really think that time is the same thing for both of them? Can you consider any coincidence between two such sets of facts as creating a historical probability?
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| Source: | "Thera and the Aegean World I" |
| Papers presented at the Second International Scientific Congress, Santorini, Greece, August 1978 | |
| Pages: | pp. 783 - 784 |
| Written by: | H. Van Effenterre |
| Centre Gustave Glotz, Sorbonne, France | |
| Book information: | |
| ©Thera and the Aegean World | |
| ISBN: | 0 9506133 0 4 |
| Published by: | Thera and the Aegean World, 105-109 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3UQ, England |
| Editor: | C. Doumas |
| To order the book from amazon.co.uk: | http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0950613304/qid=1141298899/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_0_2/203-4397765-4475969 |