- 8 months ago
2024 | HD
Πριν από περίπου 3.600 χρόνια, το ηφαίστειο που βρίσκεται στην καρδιά της Σαντορίνης εξερράγη, αφήνοντας το αρχαίο νησί της Θήρας ερημωμένο, με τους κατοίκους του να έχουν εξαφανιστεί και τις πόλεις τους να βρίσκονται σε ερείπια. Μια διεθνής επιστημονική αποστολή έχει ως στόχο να ανακαλύψει πώς εξελίχθηκε η έκρηξη και αν αυτή προκάλεσε την πτώση του μινωικού πολιτισμού, ο οποίος κυριαρχούσε στο Αιγαίο. Με την βοήθεια των γεωτρήσεων οι επιστήμονες προσπάθησαν να αποκωδικοποιήσουν τη γεωλογική ιστορία του ηφαιστείου, να κάνουν προβλέψεις για τη μελλοντική του δραστηριότητα και να αποκτήσουν γνώσεις για άλλα ηφαίστεια σε όλο τον κόσμο.
Πριν από περίπου 3.600 χρόνια, το ηφαίστειο που βρίσκεται στην καρδιά της Σαντορίνης εξερράγη, αφήνοντας το αρχαίο νησί της Θήρας ερημωμένο, με τους κατοίκους του να έχουν εξαφανιστεί και τις πόλεις τους να βρίσκονται σε ερείπια. Μια διεθνής επιστημονική αποστολή έχει ως στόχο να ανακαλύψει πώς εξελίχθηκε η έκρηξη και αν αυτή προκάλεσε την πτώση του μινωικού πολιτισμού, ο οποίος κυριαρχούσε στο Αιγαίο. Με την βοήθεια των γεωτρήσεων οι επιστήμονες προσπάθησαν να αποκωδικοποιήσουν τη γεωλογική ιστορία του ηφαιστείου, να κάνουν προβλέψεις για τη μελλοντική του δραστηριότητα και να αποκτήσουν γνώσεις για άλλα ηφαίστεια σε όλο τον κόσμο.
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00:00Υπότιτλοι AUTHORWAVE
00:30Υπότιτλοι AUTHORWAVE
01:00Υπότιτλοι AUTHORWAVE
01:29Υπότιτλοι AUTHORWAVE
01:59A forbidding black cloud of ash rises over the Isle of Santorini.
02:05For days, heavy tremors have rocked the Minoan stronghold.
02:10Now the volcano at its heart has begun to hurl searing hot ash, rocks and gas up to 35 kilometers into the stratosphere.
02:20This is what the Minoan eruption may have looked like about three and a half thousand years ago.
02:32But what exactly this eruption and others like it must have meant for the people, their island home and beyond is uncertain.
02:44Potent questions remain unanswered, even though this is an exceptionally well-studied volcano.
02:51But that is set to change.
02:55Scientists on board the international research vessel Gioides Resolution are on a groundbreaking mission to decode the mystery of the Santorini volcano.
03:05So this kind of work is important because, of course, volcanoes are a big hazard.
03:10They kill people, affect people's lives.
03:12Extracting cores from the hearth of the volcano's underwater caldera, the team from IODP hope to piece together its history.
03:22It's the first time this has been attempted with such a highly explosive volcano.
03:26One of the general features of these kinds of volcanoes is that they exhibit a kind of cyclic behavior.
03:35So with large eruptions, large explosive eruptions, relatively rarely and much smaller eruptions much more frequently.
03:42But why drill deep into the seabed when there are clearly defined sediment layers above the surface, including on the island of Santorini itself?
03:52What can you hope to discover?
03:56If you look at the map of the world, you'll see that actually two-thirds of the Earth is covered in the oceans.
04:00So if we want to understand the Earth as a system, we need to access that environment.
04:04And the only way we can do that is via something called scientific ocean drilling.
04:11I think IODP is basically as important as NASA is for space.
04:15So we know that climate changed in the past.
04:17We know this because of this drill ship, basically.
04:20We know about volcanic eruptions in the past.
04:22That's also because of this drill ship.
04:23And with this drill ship, we could prove that the continents were drifting.
04:26Basically, everyone around the world has at least known or heard of one piece that IODP has contributed.
04:32The International Ocean Discovery Programme's JOIDES Resolution is a unique research ship.
04:39Repurposed from her old role in the oil industry, she has been investigating the oceans for the last 40 years.
04:45She's like a floating, state-of-the-art laboratory, where drill cores can be analysed as soon as they're brought up from the ocean floor.
04:55These materials are always the first time anyone has seen those materials.
04:59They recover from the seafloor from a place where no one could ever access them except through scientific ocean drilling.
05:04The work takes 117 people, from drill technicians to the ship's crew and an international team of scientists.
05:15They aim to piece together the results of their analyses like a giant puzzle, to trace the volcano's behaviour over millennia.
05:26And crucially, they'll try to predict the future.
05:30Je mehr wir wissen, was in der Vergangenheit passiert ist und wie es passiert ist, desto sicherer können wir dann irgendwelche Prognosen abgeben, was denn in der Zukunft passieren könnte.
05:41We know that it had this huge eruption three and a half thousand years ago.
05:47And an eruption like that would be pretty catastrophic, I think in the middle of the Aegean.
05:52With all the islands around, with the tsunamis it would generate and so forth.
05:56And would certainly wipe out Santorini.
06:00Scientists know masses about Santorini above water.
06:09Professor Stephen Sparks has studied the volcano's geology since 1973.
06:15If you look at the cliffs that make up the Caldera Wall, you can see lots of different layers of white and red and grey.
06:28And these represent earlier eruptions, maybe tens, even hundreds of early eruptions of Santorini.
06:36So this has happened before.
06:38This volcano is cyclic.
06:40It goes through cycles of building volcanoes, having big eruptions and then destroying them and forming calderas by collapse.
06:50So far, terrestrial deposits have identified at least 12 major eruptions and many smaller ones, going back 650,000 years.
06:59But three and a half thousand years ago, the Minoan eruptions struck with unprecedented force, the most powerful in the last 10,000 years.
07:10Tracing the exact sequence of events could tell us why it was so destructive and provide clues to possible future disasters.
07:22The island as it was then was completely destroyed in the process.
07:26What happened can be broken down into four phases.
07:31The eruption started with this pumice deposit.
07:35This is a deposit of lumps of very frothy rock.
07:42Volcanic gases on the way to the surface mixed with molten magna to trigger an explosive eruption.
07:49We estimate the eruption cloud went up to about 35 or 40 kilometers well into the stratosphere.
07:58And a lot of the very fine particles were blown all over the eastern Mediterranean.
08:04This first phase likely lasted just one day.
08:09In the second phase, seawater combined with the hot magma.
08:13The resulting steam intensified the eruption into a superheated mass of steam and frothy rocks.
08:21Instead of going up high in the atmosphere, they flowed down the side of the volcano.
08:26And they flowed around everywhere as far as we can see, covering the island landscape.
08:33The original island was destroyed entirely in the next stage.
08:38So the third phase of the eruption not only has white pumice and ash, but it also has these big black lumps of rock.
08:46And we think that's basically the old island being completely blown apart.
08:51But much worse was to come.
08:54I'm on the beach on the south coast of Santorini.
08:59Behind me, you'll see these cliffs of pumice and ash and rocks, which were formed in the fourth phase of the great eruption.
09:13The ejected material must have reached about 500 degrees Celsius and flowed into the sea at speeds of up to 200 kilometers an hour.
09:21Today's iconic caldera is thought to have formed in this final phase,
09:30when the surface of the magma chamber collapsed into the now partially emptied void below.
09:38Ash flows reaching the sea triggered tsunamis.
09:43This was the height of the great eruption.
09:46If you add all that together, that makes this eruption on Santorini in the Bronze Age
09:52the largest known explosive eruption on Earth in the last 10,000 years.
10:00Defining this volcano's eruption cycle is a crucial expedition objective,
10:06to recognize renewed danger and react to it in time.
10:12Secrets must lie in undisturbed sediments on the caldera floor,
10:16Interpreting the past of the Santorini volcanic field
10:20could let the scientists predict its likely future behavior.
10:29The team on the Gioida's resolution face a daunting challenge.
10:39They have to drill six centimeter wide holes into the sea floor,
10:43about 500 meters below the water surface.
10:46It takes precision engineering.
10:50We're just about to go drilling now.
10:52Remotely controlled from the ship.
10:54So everything on this rig is gravity.
10:56So the large dial in front of him,
11:00the yellow needle is the physical weight of the drill string hanging underneath the rig.
11:04And the white needle shows him how much of that weight he's applying.
11:09We can't push because our drill string is very flexible.
11:12It's like spaghetti.
11:13It's like we're trying to drill with a shoelace.
11:16If you just dangle a shoelace and try and put some weight on it,
11:19it just bends and collapses.
11:20The most critical part is us drilling down,
11:35making sure that our calculations are right,
11:36and drilling down to the right depth.
11:38If we drill too far,
11:40then there's a gap in their core record for the scientists.
11:42There's a piece missing on Earth's history.
11:45Not least, operating so close to the island's steep shoreline
11:49is notoriously difficult.
11:53But the sediment cores retrieved from the depths of the caldera
11:57are worth the effort.
11:59They hold the key to the volcano's past.
12:03The marks left by the Minoan eruption 3,500 years ago
12:07are a striking warning of what an event that size can do to its surrounding.
12:12At the time, the Aegean was already home
12:15to highly advanced civilizations.
12:18At their helm were the Minoans of Santorini and Crete.
12:22And the eruption's aftermath
12:24was to have a momentous impact on their people.
12:27So it was a really colossal event.
12:32The eruption undoubtedly affected the whole of the eastern Mediterranean
12:36and the people living there at that time.
12:39It can't have come as a surprise to the Minoans
12:42that they were living beside an active volcano.
12:47There was the same crater that we see,
12:50a huge volcanic crater formed by an early eruption 21,000 years before.
12:56But in the middle of the crater,
12:58there was a much bigger new volcano that had grown up.
13:01And that island occupied most of the volcanic crater.
13:05Ash deposits show that the volcano
13:13must have generated smaller eruptions ahead of the main event.
13:19We know in modern volcanoes,
13:21those precursors can go on for days, weeks, months,
13:25even years before a big eruption.
13:28So the Minoans would have known something was not quite right
13:32and it's possible that they actually left the island.
13:36We don't really know.
13:37No bodies have been found.
13:39Now, of course, once the eruption starts,
13:42that's it, I'm afraid, for people who lived on the island.
13:47The Minoan eruption was an event of extraordinary magnitude,
13:50far more destructive than the infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius
13:54that buried Pompeii.
13:56They would have been raining down hot, big lumps of frothy rock.
14:01They really would have had no chance of surviving.
14:05Perhaps some of them had sheltered in buildings.
14:07They might have escaped that phase.
14:10But as soon as we got to the second phase
14:12and the seawater got in
14:14and we got these explosions and these flows going down,
14:17they would have been moving at maybe 100, 200 kilometres per hour.
14:22There would have been really no hope for anybody surviving.
14:26Archaeological excavations
14:27and what is now left of the original island of Santorini
14:30have unearthed the astonishing remains
14:32of the Minoan town of Akrotiri.
14:35The town was in the volcano's direct firing line.
14:38Shards of crockery, vases, beds, entire walls and even streets
14:46were left preserved for eternity by the volcanic ash.
14:50The finds testify to the wealth and advanced culture of Minoan society.
14:57But evidence of renovation suggests that parts of Akrotiri
15:02had been repeatedly damaged by earthquakes and repaired.
15:05Apparently, the population was prepared to put up with the hazards of life
15:10on an active volcano.
15:14But the last eruption to hit the town surpassed all that had gone before.
15:19It buried Akrotiri completely beneath thick layers of ash.
15:26Yet, no evidence of human victims of the catastrophe
15:30has ever been found on the island.
15:32Perhaps a series of unusually severe earthquakes preceded the eruption
15:36and led the inhabitants to leave Santorini before disaster struck.
15:45For although everyday belongings were left behind on the ruins of Akrotiri,
15:50no easily transportable valuables like jewellery have ever been found.
15:55It seems likely the people of Santorini would have made their escape
16:00to neighbouring Crete.
16:07Archaeologist Constanze von Röden
16:09has been on the trail of the Minoan civilisation for many years.
16:14Here, on Crete, she's trying to decode
16:16what their society might have been like.
16:19Crete was the beating heart of the Aegean powerhouse
16:28that was the Minoan Empire,
16:30an empire of seafarers and traders.
16:37The Minoans forged alliances far beyond the shores of their islands.
16:41They were wealthy and well-regarded right across the Mediterranean.
16:54Their extensive trading networks gave the Minoans the edge on their piers.
16:59Fresco paintings found in Akrotiri and Cretan Knossos
17:10provide detailed insights into Minoan life at the time of the eruption.
17:18The artists used a palette of intense colours made from natural pigments
17:22for realistic depictions of daily life, of landscapes, plants and animals.
17:29The Impressions of nature seem to have particular significance.
17:47The nature elements are brought into the palästs and villas,
17:53in the form of painting.
17:54It seems so important to be able to see
17:57that in these central political places
17:59that they want to have the nature of these central places.
18:00In other words, could a natural disaster on this scale
18:06have shaken the Minoans' faith
18:08in their belief systems and power structures?
18:11Was this the wrath of the gods?
18:18It seems likely.
18:21Certainly, Santorini was a key trading and cultural metropolis,
18:24central to the Minoan economy and power structure.
18:27Its irretrievable loss must have sent shockwaves through society.
18:34And the long-term effects?
18:35Could the gigantic volcanic eruption on Santorini have spelled the end
18:40of an entire civilisation?
18:41Geophysicist Professor Paraskevi-Nomikou comes from Santorini.
18:46The volcano has fascinated her all her life.
18:50As I was born in Santorini when I was a child,
18:55one of my dreams is to see what is happening on the sea floor.
19:00And I was always listening to stories from my grandfather
19:03when I was a little girl,
19:05that the most active volcano is not on land,
19:07but is also at the sea floor.
19:09For Santorini natives,
19:11insights from this expedition are of immediate interest.
19:15They know the volcano that's their home can also spell their end.
19:38The scope of this expedition is to understand how many volcanic eruptions
19:43occurred in the last three million years.
19:47We have studied the geology of land,
19:49but we don't know anything about the subsea floor.
19:52And that's why we are here.
19:53We want to have samples, sediments from the subsea floor
19:58and go as much deep as we can.
20:01Because if you study the past,
20:03you can understand the present and you can predict the future.
20:13The scientists on the Gioides resolution are sure
20:18they can reconstruct the volcano's past eruptions
20:21right back to the very first one.
20:24This data should allow a realistic projection of probabilities,
20:28eruption cycles and the extent of likely future eruptions.
20:32But what will scientific ocean drilling reveal in the ocean floor
20:40hundreds of meters below the surface?
20:43A new core segment is brought up every 30 minutes.
20:48The scientists' work shifts,
20:50beginning the analysis immediately in the onboard laboratories.
20:54Colour, consistency and composition are described in detail,
21:00catalogue and samples taken from every ash layer for further analysis.
21:04It's the start of a long and painstaking process.
21:11Any idea on what it is?
21:13I think it has a lot of volcanics in it.
21:16Yeah.
21:17We could call it an ash.
21:20We could call it ash with mud.
21:23Yeah, let's call it ash with mud.
21:25I think it's more mud than ash.
21:27So back home, I will sample every individual
21:30volcanic deposit that we find in the course.
21:33So I'm also looking at the tiny little millimeter-scale
21:36deposits that we have in the course
21:39in order to reconstruct a volcanic history of this field.
21:42So an eruption chronology reaching back to
21:45a couple of million years that we drilled.
21:48The impact of any volcanic activity on Santorini
21:51can go way beyond its immediate surrounding.
21:55Three and a half thousand years ago,
21:57the eruption was felt far beyond the island's shores.
22:03Its effects may have permanently weakened Minoan civilization
22:08and changed the history of the entire Aegean region.
22:12On Crete, as the heart of the Minoan realm,
22:22the impact would have been especially severe.
22:26The people of Gretas at this time
22:29had a very central role in the Aegean,
22:33also of the heutigen Griechenlands
22:34bis to the west coast of Turkey
22:36with the islands of Kykladen.
22:38We know from the later texts,
22:41there is a place to write
22:43the Minoan a Thalasokratie,
22:45a Seeherrschaft to.
22:47In fact, the Minoans influenced peoples throughout the eastern Mediterranean,
23:00right up to the Egyptian pharaohs.
23:04In fact, the Minoans influenced peoples throughout the eastern Mediterranean,
23:13right up to the Egyptian pharaohs.
23:17Very surprising was the moment,
23:21when one in the eastern Nilgälda,
23:23directly at the pelusian Nil-Arm,
23:26in a palace,
23:28found a wall painting,
23:30which is comparable to the kretian realm,
23:34both in the image and in the technique.
23:38The intensity of the Austrasse was a lot higher than we could imagine.
23:44The fact that an Egyptian palace
23:47was decorated with foreign Minoan art
23:50is a testament to their position of power and influence.
23:56The image we found in Egypt
23:58are the stairsprung scenes,
24:01which we also see here in Kreta.
24:04We see acrobats,
24:06who run over the stairs,
24:08who make saltos,
24:09flick-flack scenes
24:10or the stairs to the horns.
24:12These stairspringer-darstellungen
24:14are only found in palaces.
24:16I could say,
24:17okay,
24:18we have the stairsprung scenes in Knossos,
24:21always in political centers.
24:23Maybe that's the reason
24:24that the pharaoh went and said,
24:26this is a sign for a political,
24:29important center.
24:30That's what I would like to have.
24:31Such was the influence of Minoan culture
24:33throughout the Mediterranean,
24:35that it even percolated through the power structures
24:38of ancient Egypt.
24:46But around the time of Santorini's eruption
24:48three and a half thousand years ago,
24:50a change sets in.
24:52There's evidence of the destruction of Minoan palaces.
24:55Their economic and cultural dominance begins to wane.
24:59Could the catastrophe on Santorini have triggered the collapse
25:04of Minoan civilization?
25:09To be sure,
25:12it's crucial to fully understand the eruption cycle
25:15and its exact date
25:17by combining different technologies.
25:20On board the Joides resolution,
25:24Adam Woodhouse is preparing samples
25:26for a comprehensive biological dating
25:29of the different ash layers identified in the cause.
25:33So my objective in the terms of this expedition
25:36is to use the organisms we found within the ash layers
25:42to provide chronology to the Minoan eruption.
25:46His method is based on the remains of microorganisms
25:50and has never been used to precisely date
25:52submarine volcanic deposits.
25:57When we were looking at the ash layers,
25:59we always found the remains of planktonic organisms,
26:03organisms about the size of a grain of sand.
26:05It's the amount of radioactive C-14 carbon
26:08in the remains of the tiny organisms
26:10that will allow the dating of the eruption.
26:13They are made of calcium carbonate
26:16and have tiny little shells,
26:18sort of like a bivalve or a muscle.
26:24These organisms evolved within the Jurassic.
26:26They've been around for a couple hundred million years
26:29and they are still going strong today.
26:32The countless microorganisms known as forums
26:35found in the ash layers of the volcano
26:37must have died together during the respective eruptions.
26:41Since then, their bodies' carbon content
26:47has been decaying at a constant, measurable rate.
26:56The extent of C-14 decay indicates their time of death.
27:00For two months, the Gioides resolution raises sediment cores
27:14from the ocean floor around Santorini.
27:16Altogether, that makes almost four kilometers
27:19of volcanic sediment layers
27:21and several thousand samples for further analysis
27:24in the scientists' home laboratories.
27:28Will the samples rewrite the history of Santorini?
27:34At the Geomar Institute in North Germany,
27:37the chemical makeup of thousands of samples is being analyzed.
27:44Matching the chemical fingerprints of different ash layers
27:47with specific eruptions is crucial.
27:50Every event generates a unique chemical profile
27:53found in all of its deposits.
27:56In the Mikrosonde
27:58we're looking at every single glass layer
28:00on its elementary set.
28:01For example,
28:03how much carbon is there?
28:04How much calcium is there?
28:05How much calcium is there?
28:06How much calcium is there?
28:07Because this is after
28:08the geochemical fingerabdruck
28:09which every eruption brings
28:11every eruption with itself
28:12We use two methods
28:13to determine the chemical fingerabdruck
28:15To determine the general fingerabdruck
28:16To determine,
28:20if we're going to the forensic Department
28:21We use the normal fingerabdruck
28:24and then, in the case,
28:26the DNA-analyse.
28:27And the combination of both methods
28:30gives us to the uninstitivist
28:32the mechanism,
28:33if we show a match
28:36between an unknown and an unknown
28:39and a unknown probe
28:40to an unknown eruption
28:42or to say
28:43Δεν υπάρχει κανέναν με μια μικρή πρόβλημα.
28:45Δεν πρέπει να μια μικρή πρόβλημα και μια μικρή πρόβλημα.
29:13Υπότιτλοι AUίτρου 可以 τελειώσει κάποιες συμφωνές.
29:19Ιωνάς Π difference and Katherine Panck compare their results at the Geomar Institute.
29:25The sediment layers identified by the acoustic profiles give a clear picture of the volcanoes underwater topography
29:32and the thickness of different ash layers under the sea floor.
29:36These can be assigned to specific eruptions via their chemical fingerprints.
29:42The seismic profiles have identified completely unexpected layers in the seafloor of Santorini.
29:54Some had originally been dismissed as underwater landslides.
29:58Now the team has had to revise their conclusions.
30:05The geochemical data is clear.
30:07These sediment layers must have been created by a previously entirely unknown eruption of Santorini.
30:28The results suggest, Santorini suffered a gigantic eruption about 500,000 years ago.
30:34Bigger even than the Minoan eruption.
30:38But why was it not previously identified in the volcanic ash layers found on land?
30:44We have a very good record on land, back to about 300,000 years.
30:51But the record on land is inevitably incomplete, because it rains, there's wind, and so this erodes, washes away some of the products.
30:59And then older eruptions are not preserved on land.
31:03But they are preserved in these sediments in the marine basins around Santorini.
31:10The discovery of such a huge event confined to underwater deposits underlines how incomplete the land-based sediment archive is.
31:19Studying volcanoes like this exclusively on land and not in the surrounding sea means there are critical gaps in the records.
31:28We can't afford that if you think that Santorini will visit more than 2 million tourists.
31:34The fact that these sorts of eruptions are possible in the heart of Europe is something to take into account.
31:41The fact that these sorts of eruptions are possible in the heart of Europe is something to take into account.
31:57Very important, of course, to say that that doesn't mean an eruption like that's going to happen in the near future.
32:01But it shows that the Hellenic Volcanic Arc is capable of such eruptions.
32:08The presentation of vulcan-breeches is certainly what we all strive to do.
32:13We try to learn from the past.
32:15So if we know how this vulcan-system works in Santorini,
32:19we can also develop strategies for which warning signals you have to hear.
32:25Although the Aegean is used to the fallout of seismic activity like the earthquake-generated tsunami of 2020,
32:33a big eruption of Santorini could have unexpectedly severe effects.
32:38The scientific insights gained from the Minoan eruption show that this volcano can be deadly.
32:44Though no evidence of human casualties has been found,
32:47there are strong indications that the eruption would have killed people.
32:50The Minoans on Crete would have been watching this high Plinian plume.
32:56And then the next thing that the Minoans would have known about it was when the tsunamis arrived,
33:02because the entrance of these pyroclastic flows into the sea and the collapse of the caldera
33:07would have generated these waves estimated maybe 9, 10 metres on Crete.
33:12And these waves would have arrived at high speed and inundated the coast
33:16and destroyed some of their coastal towns.
33:17So they were the same sort of height as the waves from the Krakatoa eruption
33:22that swept into Java and Sumatra in 1883, killing a lot of people.
33:27So these waves undoubtedly would have killed people.
33:31Recent excavations along the west coast of Turkey support this theory.
33:35More than 200 kilometres from Santorini near Izmir, the volcano also left an indelible mark.
33:48Here, archaeologist Vasiv Sahoglu and his team are excavating ancient settlements along the coast.
33:59He's looking for evidence of catastrophic tsunamis.
34:03Recently he made a groundbreaking discovery.
34:05We found remains which looked like total chaos.
34:15We excavated a very well preserved settlement with streets, houses, 10, 20 metres next to it.
34:23Total chaos.
34:24In 2017 Vasiv Sahoglu and his team made an extraordinary find near the coastline at Cesme Baglararasi.
34:37We found volcanic ash which was coming from Santorini eruption.
34:42plus above and below the ash we also found deposits which we later identified as tsunami deposits.
34:51And seeing what the impact of this tsunami 227 kilometres away from Santorini made,
35:01it literally wiped out the entire settlement in Cesme Baglararasi.
35:05The effect of the Minoan eruption on the peoples of the Aegean is still difficult to assess.
35:13The lack of human remains despite the scale of the eruption has left an unsolved conundrum.
35:20Another very striking, let's say, discovery in our research was the skeleton of a dead man
35:28which we found under big stones and within our tsunami deposits.
35:35This natural disaster must have killed thousands of people living all around the Aegean Sea.
35:43There must have been thousands of settlements and so many people living in these settlements right at that moment.
35:50We know that this happened but then there was no proof of it until this moment.
35:55The find at Cesme Baglararasi was a breakthrough for the archaeologists.
36:02Clear evidence of the colossal scope of the Minoan eruption.
36:07Vasif Sohoglu is now hoping for further discoveries that could prove the horrific impact of the eruption across the Aegean.
36:15He too is looking for clues along the coast and underwater.
36:19Of course we have to think of Santorini way down 227 kilometres south.
36:27Imagine the eruption happened and the tsunamis are coming in the Aegean towards the north.
36:35So all these southern coasts must have been affected totally.
36:39Let's think about this event in Cesme.
36:44They must have heard the eruption of Santorini and suddenly imagine the sea starts to grow and cover the land and it's so strong and it must be very fast.
36:57And suddenly imagine the sea coming and destroying everything.
37:01Your own people getting carried in the tsunami waves, in the water.
37:09The archaeologists calculate that the eruption must have triggered at least four tsunamis.
37:15We have this volcanic ash layer in between the tsunami layers.
37:23Meaning there were times when it was all quiet, the water went back into the sea.
37:29So people, the survivors, must have thought it's over.
37:35The tsunami waves would have arrived at the Turkish coastline within days, maybe hours of each other.
37:41The local population would have had time to return to the ruins of their homes, only to be taken by surprise by the next wave.
37:52The waves must have pulled everything into the sea.
37:56We now begin to think that actually its impacts must have been much bigger than ever predicted.
38:04Maybe we didn't, we as archaeologists, didn't really look for this enough in the past.
38:11Since Cesme is so far away from Santorini and it had such a big impact, we believe all the coasts of Aegean Sea,
38:21Western Anatolian coast, the Greek mainland coasts, Cycladic islands, northern coastline of Crete,
38:29they must have all been wiped out.
38:35The discovery of just a single skeleton from such a cataclysmic event may seem meagre,
38:41but it provides evidence that the Minoan eruption cost lives even hundreds of kilometers away.
38:49What does that mean for the island of Crete so much closer to Santorini?
38:53Karl Knappit has been leading excavations on the Minoan harbour site of Palacastro on Crete's northeastern coast.
39:02The eruption must have taken people by surprise here too.
39:06The eruption would have sent up a huge cloud of ash and that travelled in this direction.
39:12So it was clearly a really massive event here and pretty cataclysmic.
39:16People would have surely been very frightened and if there was a tsunami too then that would have been also a terrifying ordeal.
39:28We can only speculate how the population reacted.
39:32The archaeological ruins offer little evidence of the human toll.
39:35But there are traces of ash deposits from Santorini in the remains of Palacastro.
39:43It's certain the fallout reached this Minoan harbour town.
39:50But how serious was the impact on the island's population?
39:57On Santorini the eruption destroyed everything.
40:00The island remained uninhabited for hundreds of years.
40:03It was definitely lost to the Minoans as a seat of power.
40:07But on Crete the effects were on a different scale.
40:11Lots of sites on Crete though, the people living on those sites at the time, they carry on living in the same place.
40:21The excavations at Palacastro have unearthed signs that the ash was swept up, damaged homes were repaired and rebuilt and a settlement persisted at the same site.
40:31It's likely the population recovered fairly well from the catastrophe.
40:42Just like people caught up in similar disasters today.
40:47The eruption of the Hunga Tonga Hunga Hapai volcano in January 2022 bears parallels to the Minoan eruption.
40:58It was one of the strongest eruptions ever recorded in modern times.
41:03More powerful than all nuclear weapons tests ever conducted.
41:08The island nation of Tonga was covered in a five to ten centimeter thick layer of ash.
41:14A destructive tsunami followed.
41:17The ash layer and salt water flooding the fields ruined the harvest.
41:25High concentrations of sulfur dioxide generated acid rain.
41:30At least 80% of the population was affected by the damage.
41:34Three months later, the rebuild was well underway and the people of Tonga were looking ahead.
41:42Life simply carried on.
41:45That could have been the situation in Palacastro thousands of years ago too.
41:51But was there a secondary long-term fallout?
41:54There's reason to believe there may have been more gradual impact, particularly on the capacity to engage in trade from site to site.
42:10The ash from Santorini must have had immediate effects on people right across the eastern Mediterranean.
42:16Traces have been found scattered over a huge area.
42:23And that was due to the enormous size of the eruption cloud, catapulting ash 30 kilometers up into the atmosphere.
42:32That's very high. It's about three times higher than you fly in a transatlantic jet.
42:37So you'd observed an enormous great sort of column of billowing ash and pumice in the atmosphere and then it would have reached about 30 kilometers and spread out.
42:51This would have been presumably a pretty traumatic event for a lot of the inhabitants who would have never seen anything like this before.
43:00The ash would have fallen. It's a very sort of whitish green powdery material with little glass particles in.
43:10So this would have covered the fields and the town.
43:15But it's likely that people would have looked ahead and recovered.
43:20Just like the population of Tonga in 2022.
43:24I think then it's clear that a lot of settlements just swept up, cleaned all the ash away and carried on.
43:38So there's clearly a capacity to adapt.
43:40They probably would have impacted shipping and coastal and harbors.
43:44So there would have undoubtedly been effects and mortalities.
43:47But on the scale of the entire island and the entire civilization, these wouldn't have been enough to have had a major effect on such an advanced people.
44:04And yet, the eruption of Santorini may have triggered the unraveling of essential political and social structures of the Minoan rulers.
44:13It might have destabilized or threatened their view of Knossos, the central power on the island and its capacity to protect them in various ways.
44:30Could the gigantic eruption at Santorini have caused the eventual downfall of the Minoan culture?
44:36I think we have to be clear that there's about a century between the eruption and the demise of Minoan civilization.
44:53So a good 100 years.
44:55So it's really impossible to make a direct connection between the two phenomena.
44:59However, you could argue that the eruption is a kind of catalyst for what happens decades later with the Minoan demise or collapse.
45:13One idea is that the eruption could have had such profound social and even psychological effects on the population that some communities stopped trusting Knossos.
45:26So this could have eventually led to infighting, turmoil, but it could have taken a long time.
45:33So the eruption may have been just the straw that broke the camel's back.
45:39There are clear indications that Creep was plagued by civil unrest in the decades following the disaster.
45:47A new writing system suggests that a new elite took control of the island a few decades later.
45:53The exact reconstruction of the Minoan eruption by the IODP team could provide important dates to some extent later.
45:54The exact reconstruction of the Minoan eruption by the IODP team could provide important dates to some extent.
45:55to support these theories.
45:56The exact reconstruction of the Minoan eruption by the IODP team could provide important dates to support these theories.
45:58The exact reconstruction of the Minoan eruption by the IODP team could provide important dates to support these theories.
46:17In Bristol, Adam Woodhouse is dating the submarine ash layers using carbon-14 stored in the remains of microorganisms.
46:37Because the team managed to isolate the remains of many microscopic forams in the ash samples,
46:44the hope is that the C-14 dating can provide statistically significant results
46:49to support and refine the dates already gained from just a few terrestrial samples.
46:55So the preliminary results that we've obtained from our forearms is actually consistent with the date of the eruption somewhere between 1650 and 1500 BC.
47:09We have so much material from this expedition.
47:12We can keep performing these analyses and keep getting more dates and hopefully that can refine this record much further.
47:19Dating the eruption and refining this date is important because this was an important time in human history
47:24and understanding when this eruption occurred and what it potentially did to these early civilizations within the Mediterranean is important for understanding the human story as a whole.
47:34Dating more microscopic forams from the ash layers of Santorini could produce statistical clusters of dates,
47:41refining the results gained thus far.
47:47Six months after extracting the drill cores from the caldera of Santorini,
47:51the researchers meet in Bremen in Germany.
47:54The first results are discussed and analysis continues.
47:5915,000 samples are taken within the space of just a week from thousands of core segments.
48:05The cores were carefully described and sampled on board the Gioides resolution,
48:10but now interdisciplinary examination can be deepened.
48:14The seismic data and geochemical analyses of the marine ash layers have generated a further surprise.
48:23Evidence of an eruption that matches historical descriptions,
48:27but had never been identified in geological records on land.
48:31Was spannend ist, dass es einen Ausbruch gab, der historisch beschrieben ist,
48:36im Jahr 726 nach Christus, und die historischen Aufzeichnungen berichten davon,
48:41dass das Meer über Tage lang quasi geblubbert hat, also dass es da quasi Gasaufstiege gab.
48:48Das ist dann irgendwann so weit gegangen, dass dann die ganze Meeresoberfläche mit Bimsen voll war.
48:54Also Bims ist ja Vulkangestein, das nur sehr geringe Dichte hat und dann schwimmt.
48:58Und diese Bimsflöße, die sind in der ganzen Ägäis gefunden worden.
49:03Also es gibt Berichte davon, dass die bis nach Konstantinopel,
49:08was damals ja das Zentrum dieser historischen Welt war, getrieben sind und dann auch die Straße zum Schwarzen Meer blockiert haben.
49:16Historical records describe a huge eruption.
49:20Yet, aside from a thin layer of ash on the island of Paglia Khomeini inside the caldera of Santorini,
49:27no evidence has been found on land.
49:31But underwater, the researchers could identify the eruption for the first time.
49:37Enormous ash layers confirm an eruption of gigantic dimensions.
49:43Und da sieht man, dass sie an einigen Orten bis zu 150 Meter groß ist.
49:48Also es ist wirklich ein großes Event.
49:51Und das können wir relativ zuordnen und alles deutet darauf hin, dass es diese 726er Eruption sein kann.
50:01Und wenn wir jetzt sowas sehen, also dass quasi direkt neben dem Zentrum eines Vulkans fast nichts davon übrig ist,
50:08müssen wir davon ausgehen, dass also unsere Archive deutlich unvollständig sind.
50:13Und es zeigt, dass wir solche Sachen wirklich nur, indem wir wissenschaftlich bohren herausfinden können.
50:18But can our much fuller understanding of this volcanic history generate reliable prognoses?
50:27So looking back in the past is one of the techniques that the volcanologists use to gain insight into how a volcano might behave in the future.
50:40Based on the historical record, the team will generate risk assessments of future scenarios to identify likely danger zones.
50:49The aim is to create effective evacuation plans in case of a renewed eruption.
50:55Bei Santorin ist es ganz klar, wir sind in der Mitte von Europa mehr oder weniger.
51:03Wenn dieser Vulkan wieder eruptiert, dann wird es nicht wie in 1650 nur ein paar Schafe erwischen, sondern dann sind wirklich Todesfälle angesagt.
51:12The current level of understanding suggests that a massive eruption like the Minoan one may not happen for several thousand years,
51:20but an earlier disaster cannot be discounted.
51:24The generalities of a Santorini-type volcano is that it can have large explosive eruptions like the Minoan or the Arceus relatively rarely.
51:35Santorini has an eruption like that every 30 or 40 thousand years.
51:39And an eruption like that would be pretty catastrophic, I think, in the middle of the Aegean,
51:45with all the islands around, with the tsunamis it would generate and so forth, and would certainly wipe out Santorini.
51:52Vulkane can unberechenbar sein und deshalb muss eigentlich so ein Vulkan relativ gut überwacht werden.
51:58And we're finding out in fact there are a lot of things recorded under the sea,
52:02eruptions that we didn't know about at all that are giving us greater insight into how it behaves
52:08and enabling us to extrapolate our conceptual and even kind of mathematical models
52:13about how the volcanoes behave back further into the past, giving us greater confidence about them.
52:18The geological, biological and historical research into Santorini will continue for months, even years.
52:37As, piece by piece, the volcano gives up its secrets.
52:52It's already clear that evidence found on land only holds part of the story.
52:58But underwater, deposits of completely unknown eruptions are preserved untouched,
53:06including the biggest eruption this volcanic field ever generated about half a million years ago.
53:12Assessing the danger posed by Santorini for the people and the environment of the eastern Mediterranean is particularly urgent.
53:26If nothing else, the impact of the Minoan eruption is evidence of how destructive this volcano can be.
53:33Eruptions like this, affecting the climate, harvests, the water supply, destabilize entire societies.
53:46The Aegean's Minoan superpower must have battled with the fallout over many years.
53:53Its downfall was only a matter of time.
53:58The preliminary insights gained by this revolutionary IODP expedition are clear.
54:05This volcano should not be underestimated.
54:08It will continue to dominate the Aegean for thousands of years to come.
54:28The Aegean's Minoan
54:29The Aegean's Minoan
54:30The Aegean's Minoan
54:31The Aegean's Minoan
54:32The Aegean's Minoan
54:33The Aegean's Minoan
54:34The Aegean's Minoan
54:35The Aegean's Minoan
54:36The Aegean's Minoan
54:37The Aegean's Minoan
54:38The Aegean's Minoan
54:39The Aegean's Minoan
54:40The Aegean's Minoan
54:41The Aegean's Minoan
54:42The Aegean's Minoan
54:43The Aegean's Minoan
54:44The Aegean's Minoan
54:45The Aegean's Minoan
54:46The Aegean's Minoan
54:47The Aegean's Minoan
54:48The Aegean's Minoan
54:49The Aegean's Minoan