Researchers Will Search For “Fingerprints” Of Thera/Santorini Eruption In Tree Rings

Conny Waters - AncientPages.com - The catastrophic Minoan eruption - one of the largest volcanic outbreaks in recorded history of mankind and known as the ‘Thera eruption’ - took place around 1650 BC. It buried the major port city of Akrotiri with more than 20 meters of ash and created Santorini’s famous, present-day cliffs.

The whole region is prone to volcanic activity, which was much greater than it is now.

The catastrophic event on the island of Thera thousands of years ago, contributed to the collapse of the Minoan civilization and was a turning point in the history of Western civilization.

As the exact date of the event is still unknown, an international team of scientists led by Prof. Tomasz Ważny from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, Poland will search for “fingerprints” of Thera/Santorini Eruption, recorded in tree rings.

"Trees annually record environmental conditions in the wood structure. This record is retained in the form of so-called rings in the wood for hundreds, even thousands of years,” said Prof. Ważny.

Rings of nineteenth-century cedar wood plank from the Toplou Monastery in Crete. The wood comes from the Antalya region in Turkey. Source: Prof. Tomasz Ważny

“Radiocarbon dating is not reliable anymore and it has been questioned in recent years; cores taken from glaciers have gaps. Only dendrochronology can provide clear and indisputable dating expressed in calendar years.”

“Sometimes it even allows to determine the time of year, during which a specific historical event took place," added Prof. Ważny.

To carry out this important study, the researchers need wood and charcoal from the second millennium BC. Some of the material already available for analysis comes from archaeological sites and tombs. Researchers will search for more material in Turkey, Greece and the Balkans.

Tree rings are an important source of information as they record tree stress, a strong negative reaction to a climatic event or disaster that seriously affected tree growth and even stopped it.

Left: 4-meter "slice" of redwood. The tree began to grow in the 3rd century AD, and now is the main exhibit in the Tree-Ring Research Laboratory at the University of Arizona. ; Right: Rings of redwood. The tree began to grow in the 3rd century AD, and now is the main exhibit in the Tree-Ring Research Laboratory at the University of Arizona. Source: Prof. Tomasz Ważny

The longest growth calendars reach the 9th millennium BC.

Trees can react in two ways to a volcanic eruption - depending on the distance from the epicenter. Volcanic ash fertilizes the soil a few hundred kilometers from the volcano. This causes the trees growing there to record a series of wider annual growths. In turn, the trees closer to the epicenter can be damaged, and strong ash fallout can also seriously disrupt the process of photosynthesis.

These clues will help researchers to find “fingerprints” of the volcanic eruption that destroyed Thera.

There is also a certain difficulty. The whole region is prone to volcanic activity, which was much greater than it is now. Therefore, researchers have to identify the volcano that caused the Thera Eruption, 4,000 years ago.

The five-year study will involve scientists from Greece, Germany, Turkey, Croatia, Bulgaria, and the University of Arizona in the US - home of the world's largest tree-ring research lab.

source -PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland

Written by Conny Waters - AncientPages.com Staff Writer