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Santorini, once called Thera, is a beautiful collection of small Mediterranean islands encircling a central volcanic hub With its breathtaking views and stunning sunsets, Santorini is a magnet for tourists from all over the world who visit to sample the unique culture of the Greek islands. But Santorini is much more than a picturesque holiday retreat. Hidden under layers of volcanic rock are the remains of a once proud city that perished in a terrible calamity over 35 centuries ago, a city whose destruction many people believe gave rise to the myth of Atlantis.
The story of this momentous archeological find began in the 19th century on another Mediterranean island 70 miles south of Santorini, an island called Crete. In 1899, the British archeologist Arthur Evans had begun unearthing on Crete the remains of a mysterious civilization, which seemed to have been completely forgotten by history. Based on Knossos Evans uncovered the remains of a powerful sea trading people who worshiped the bull and built large labyrinthine buildings. Factors which encouraged him to name this unknown culture the Minoans after King Minos, a mythological figure from ancient Greek history said to have been the father of the Minotaur.
The Minoans are probably the single greatest mystery in all of classical history. We don’t really know where they came from, and certainly don’t know what happened to them. But they were building these elaborate palaces and making these fabulous frescos, long before anybody else was doing. This’s 1500 BC and remember that Parthenon and Plato himself existed around 350 BC. It was while excavating a Minoan villa on Crete some 35 years after Arthur Evans that a Greek archeologist called Spyridon Marinatos discovered evidence of a huge volcanic explosion.
When he reached the foundations, my father found quite a large quantity of volcanic pumice. So he thought, what is going on here? Where's the volcano? He looked at the map and he thought, well, the closest volcano is the volcano of Santorini, when did this erupt?
Based on provisional calculations, Marinatos estimated that the volcano of Santorini had erupted in around 1500 BC. It was a cataclysmic explosion, equivalent to 150 hydrogen bombs. The center of Santorini was ripped open as 50 cubic miles of rock vaporized. Debris was hurtled as far afield as Egypt and Israel. Gigantic Tsunamis overwhelmed coastlines everywhere in the Mediterranean. And aftershocks were felt all over the world. The island of Santorini was shattered into fragments of its former self.
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encircle: v. 环绕，包围
hub: n. 中心
picturesque: adj. 如画的
labyrinthine: adj. 迷宫一样的，曲折的
Minotaur: n.人面牛身怪兽
fresco: n. 壁画
cataclysmic: adj. 重大的，严重的
pumice: n. 浮石
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