Talk:Minoan eruption

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Good articleMinoan eruption has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
May 19, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed
May 23, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed
May 26, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed
June 2, 2007Good article nomineeListed
July 20, 2007Peer reviewReviewed
Current status: Good article


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Vulcanology[edit]

In the Vulcanology section, the lead sentence would be better served, and more understandable to lay readers who are not familiar with the types of volcanic eruptions, if it read similarly as: ‘The Minoan event, a Plinian type eruption . . . ‘ Dtss2017 (talk) 13:09, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I have tried to make it a bit clearer. Dudley Miles (talk) 13:40, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Atlantis[edit]

Definitely sounds like Atlantis to me. Most scholars against it are probably Anglosaxons, who want their Atlanticist fiction to be true. Meroitte (talk) 12:31, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]


Exodus!?!?[edit]

While I respect a person’s choice to believe or disbelieve in the supernatural, why is the story of Exodus referenced in this article? There was no ‘exodus.’ Never happened, does not have a scientific or factual basis, and is a fairytale. If, and I use that word very loosely, there is ever any scientific and factual historic evidence found to the contrary, then, and only then, should a paragraph regarding the exodus be added to this article. It should be removed. Dtss2017 (talk) 13:30, 25 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

New radiocarbon date[edit]

Supposedly early 1500s BC. Should wait for some official news before adding to article I guess.

https://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/10/21/santorini-volcano-explosion-dates-changed-piece-of-olive-tree-found-on-thirasia-changes-everything/

Ploversegg (talk) 01:19, 27 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Carbon gas emitted from the volcano is naturally C14 deficient and can lead to substantial dating errors if enough is absorbed by the surrounding plant life.[edit]

I tried adding text to the article to indicate that the dating of the eruption using carbon dating may be effected by C14 deficient carbon emitted by the volcano itself. With a half life of over 5,000 years C14 decays at a rate of about 1% every hundred years, so if 1% of the carbon in the olive branch tested (reference in the article and found covered in volcanic lava), was actually gas emissions from the volcano, that branch would date about 100 years older than it actually is. This would explain the 100 year discrepancy in the dating methods.

proposed addition follows - I have someone hounding me that goes around reverting everything I post. If you guys find it a valuable addition, then please add the following or similar language to the article.

One source of C14 deficient carbon would be the volcano itself. C14 is created by cosmic ray bombardment in the upper atmosphere. Carbon inside the earth does not take part in this process and is C14 deficient compared to carbon in the atmosphere. If the volcano emitted carbon gas for extended periods of time, some of this gas would have been absorbed by surrounding plant life, making them C14 deficient compared to plants far from the volcano. Carbon dating would therefore date plants near the volcano as older then those further away. Because the half life of C14 is over 5,000 years, if 1% of the carbon in nearby plant life was sourced form carbon emitted by the volcano, it would be dated about 100 years older per C14 dating.71.174.128.111 (talk) 17:35, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your contributions, but they are against Wikipedia rules. Statements have to be based on and cited to reliable sources, not your own calculations. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:03, 3 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@71.174.128.111:: Wikipedia is not the right place for original research. If you have a reliable source confirming your paragraph, the information can be re-added. It can be your own research, but it needs to be peer-reviewed and published. --bender235 (talk) 02:50, 4 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Original research on Thera[edit]

The article already points out that any Carbon 14 (C14) deficient carbon absorbed by plants would make them date older per C14 dating because they would start off as deficient in C14.

It is common knowledge that C14 is created in the atmosphere by cosmic ray bombardment, and that carbon inside the earth is deficient. It should be obvious that carbon released from the earth by volcanoes and then absorbed by plants near the volcanoes would make C14 dating of those plants off. The amount that the dating is off would depend on how much deficient carbon was emitted by the volcanoes and then absorbed by nearby plants.

Since the half life of C14 is over 5,000 years, if nearby plants absorbed 1% C14 deficient carbon originating from the volcano, a 1% starting deficiency would equal a 1% age difference, where 1% is about 100 years.

In case you have not seen any - here is a picture of a volcano emitting gas - a good chunk of which is carbon. Also common knowledge.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/

Per wikipedia guidelines common knowledge does not require citations. C14 dating of materials found near volcanoes is already widely recognized as problematic - Just because it is not common knowledge to YOU, does not mean it is not common knowledge for others. Do you have any background in Physics? Volcanoes? History? Carbon dating? Anyone on those fields would immediately recognize the issue, if he (or she) had bothered to use the 2 brain cells not yet dead from the poison of ego!

https://phys.org/news/2018-10-explosive-lies-volcanoes-age.html

The effect of volcanic carbon on eruption ages

Our study re-analysed the large series of radiocarbon dates for the Taupo eruption and found that the oldest dates were closest to the volcano vent. The dates were progressively younger the farther away they were.

This unusual geographic pattern has been documented very close (i.e. less than a kilometre) to volcanic vents before, but never on the scale of tens of kilometres. Two wiggle match ages, taken from the same forest, located about 30km from the caldera lake, were among the oldest dates from the series of dates.

This conceptual image shows how gas from the triggering event, decades before the eruption, works its way into the groundwater system and is eventually incorporated in the wood of the trees that we date. 71.174.128.111 (talk) 19:43, 11 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

new studies[edit]

pnas.org: Volcanic ash, victims, and tsunami debris from the Late Bronze Age Thera eruption discovered at Çeşme-Bağlararası (Turkey) (PNAS January 4, 2022 119 (1) e2114213118)

I hope someone with sound knowledge than me can integrate this in the lemma. thanks in advance --Präziser (talk) 16:33, 12 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And now Sturt W. Manning. Second Intermediate Period date for the Thera (Santorini) eruption and historical implications. PLOS ONE, 2022; 17 (9): e0274835 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0274835Kdammers (talk) 18:39, 22 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Edits to the lead 28 July 2022[edit]

@Bender235: The Chinese Bamboo Annals report of unusual yellow skies and summer frost at the beginning of the Shang dynasty, which may have been a consequence of volcanic winter (similar to 1816, the Year Without a Summer, after the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora). isn’t a sentence. My solution was to tie it in to the previous sentence, so that may have been described also applies to the Chinese Bamboo Annals. If you don’t like this, then you should reword it so that it is grammatical. Sweet6970 (talk) 08:03, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry, but why is my version not a grammatically correct sentence? Besides that, in my opinion the sentence would be too long if it included both the detail about the Tempest Stele and the Bamboo Annals. --bender235 (talk) 19:43, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There’s no main verb. The subject is The Chinese Bamboo Annals report of unusual yellow skies and summer frost at the beginning of the Shang dynasty but there’s no verb applicable to this. On reflection, a better way to fix this would be to delete ‘of’ and change ‘report’ (which in your version is a noun) to ‘reported’, which would then be the verb which applies to ‘The Chinese Bamboo Annals’ The wording would then be: The Chinese Bamboo Annals reported unusual yellow skies and summer frost at the beginning of the Shang dynasty, which may have been a consequence of volcanic winter (similar to 1816, the Year Without a Summer, after the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora). Sweet6970 (talk) 20:47, 29 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
In the absence of any objection, I am making the amendment I proposed. Sweet6970 (talk) 07:42, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I took 'report' to be the verb. Make it 'reported' if that's better. --bender235 (talk) 17:28, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, better - like grammatical. Johnbod (talk) 18:04, 1 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

New range for Minoan Eruption datings[edit]

@Dudley Miles: You reverted the wide range of recent datings with the argument that they "treat [only] one study in a highly contested area as definitive." Actually it's the consequence of three latest studies, by different academic teams, that already reached somekind of consensus. They are:

1) Sohoglu et al (2021) who state that "[w]hile these ages do not negate either chronology, it does limit the age to no older than 1612 BCE[...]"

2) Pearson et al (2022) which rules out the possibility of 1628 BCE eruption and shows Thera eruption was between 1611 and 1538 BCE, and

3) Manning (2022) who shows it occurred between 1609 and 1560 BCE (95.4% probability).

So, integrating the three references, range is c. 1612 to 1538 BCE. On the other hand, just pointing out 1600 BCE is a very narrow view.Carlos Eduardo Aramayo B. (talk) 14:58, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Is this a good place to mention that I have thought for a while that the whole Eruption Dating section needs to be rewritten? It has grown by accretion over the years (I am guilty of some of that) and now lacks all coherency. If you looks at any one pieces the date seems obvious, like the linear A find says it MUST have been after 1600 BC for example. The data points need to be taken in their totality and the changes in validity of those data points with the passage of time need to be considered. Anyway, yeah, I think it needs a do over. I have not done it because I avoid argument magnets on Wikipedia like the plague. :-)Ploversegg (talk) 16:14, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comment. I agree that it would be helpful if you rewrite the dating section, but it is against the rules for you to make your own summary of sources in the infobox. It is WP:SYNTH. It is also too specific for a Wikipedia summary. 95.4% probability, which is two-sigma, is an arbitrary although widely accepted standard of probability for C14 dating. If you calculated to 96% or 94% you would get different dates. Dudley Miles (talk) 17:17, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Dudley Miles: I have reverted nothing in this article. Do not shoot the innocent bystander.Ploversegg (talk) 19:55, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies. My mistake. Dudley Miles (talk) 20:45, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Dudley Miles: Well, as far as I understand how the engine works, what happenned was that two editors were sending their messages at the same time, mine was published but yours not. Of course I did not delete your comment as you then did to mine.Carlos Eduardo Aramayo B. (talk) 21:10, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies again. The history showed your edit overwriting and deleting mine. See [1]. I have never known that to happen before. The engine has always refused to accept the later edit when two editors try to publish revisions to the same version, not overwritten the earlier with the later. It looks like a bug. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:35, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Dudley Miles: Regarding 'first reversion' to the article's box, I did not reverted it, I only added the word "Sometime" at the beginning of the stable version. Take a look at it. It was a clarification, not reversion.Carlos Eduardo Aramayo B. (talk) 21:17, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

OK. Your edit drew my attention to what I thought needed correction, and you then disagreed with my correction and reverted it. Dudley Miles (talk) 21:35, 18 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Improper generalization[edit]

Dear contributors, a SINGLE, in addition meanwhile 10 year old, paper MUST NOT be cited as "is now believed"!!HJHolm (talk) 16:24, 27 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

My recent edit on dating section[edit]

Though it may look like the section is completely changed, I mostly just reorganized it. Most radiocarbon dates are just from the same referenced papers in previous edits, except I put them in more readable table format and put them under consistent criterion 2σ if original papers reported. Previous edits lacked coherency and was seemingly a pile of random papers, also lacked contexts on why 2020s radiocarbon so much younger than radiocarbon performed in 1990s or 2000s.

So I added two paragraphs to explain why radiocarbon dates in 2018 shifted from 17th-century BC (e.g. 1627-1600 BC in olive tree dating) to include 16th-century BC (e.g. 1609-1560 BC in Manning 2022). This is because Pearson team modified calibration curve in 2018. Radiocarbon age section is now very comprehensive and coherent, at least to me.

I'm less familiar with archaeological side of debate but previous edits almost completely lacked it. Previous edits just repetitively claimed two things : (1) eruption placed in LM-IA/LH-I in archaeological context; (2) archaeologists believe 1500BCE; without citing the middle step of why (1) implies (2). So I added a paragraph to explain that this entirely has to do with Aegean correlation with Egyptian chronology.

It must be noted that date of LM-IA/LH-I itself provides no insight into date of eruption because LM-IA/LH-I itself has been dated to 1600BCE by radiocarbon and 1500BCE by seriation correlation with Egyptian chronology. That is, the date of LM-IA/LH-I itself is actually part of Minoan date debate. Everyone, from all sides, agrees that the eruption took place in LM-IA/LH-I

No original research in my edits, as you can trace every sentence to a slightly different phrasing in the reference immediately after the end of the sentence

@Ploversegg As I'm less familiar with archaeological side of debate, please review my edits, especially the archaeological section.

Previous edits did include a sentence about Linear A inscriptions ("the inscriptions are dated to Middle Minoan III/Late Minoan I, which is currently placed at circa 1600 BCE") but the reference (https://doi.org/10.1515%2Fkadm.1999.38.1-2.12) provided says nothing about the age of inscriptions "the Linear A inscriptions has been the subject of much debate for more than half a century. The earliest date offered is c. 1630-20 B.C./ a later proposal is c. 1535-1525 B.C.7 There is approximately a century between these dates, but both fall inside LMIA" (p. 15 in ref). Thats why I removed it.

As far as I understand, Linear A is just another evidence that eruption occurred in LM-IA/LH-I which could be either 1600BCE (radiocarbon) or 1500BCE (seriation correlation with Egyptian chronology). Aleral Wei (talk) 09:34, 23 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Aleral Wei

Ok, as for the Linear A inscriptions, the full paper said "In summarizing it can be observed that the Theran inscriptions have Minoan comparanda predominantly dating from the MM III/LM I border period, conventionally dated to c. 1600 B.C. in absolute terms, thus strongly suggesting an earlier rather than a later date for the destruction of Akrotiri" which as the author also said depends on where we think the minoan chronology goes vis-a-vis the Egyptian and ANE chronologies.
I guess one thing that concerned me off the top was the new "The massive archaeological evidence argues for a Theran eruption date between circa 1550–1480 BCE." which is Really low compared to the what the the radiocarbon, stratigraphic, etc data points would indicate. Closer to a bottom range point around 1500 BC is I think the lowest I've seen anyone promote (except for a couple cases where they were trying to promote the historicity of the Exodus from the Hebrew Bible).
You are correct that radiocarbon calibration is a big issue, especially for this area which is a bit short in good dendrochronological data. A big problem, in my opinion, is that researcher often do not list which calibration they used or give absolute uncalibrated dates so later people can redo the calibration. Especially true for earlier papers.
I was serious about the sogginess of the EC. Don't get me started. :-) I'll just say that there are a LOT of place, even in the 1st millenium, where they aren't even sure who the pharoah was, or exactly how long there reign was, or if there were two pharoahs (north/south). Add in the problems with the Intermediate Period and it very much NOT set in stone.Ploversegg (talk) 00:42, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@Ploversegg
Thanks, I actually agree with yours on that "The massive archaeological evidence" part is weak. To be fair, if I were to re-edit this section fully based on my opinions, I probably would have said something like "The archaeological evidence tentatively suggest" but I'm afraid that it would be original research, or a perhaps not NPOV, since a non-trivial number of archaeologists do think the evidence is massive. My solution was to directly cite from Wiener, 2015 (p. 132) which claims "massive archaeological evidence".
Perhaps, a better phrasing would be "Some archaeologists believe the evidence is massive enough to argue for a Theran eruption date between circa 1550–1480 BCE". I've seen arguments put out for younger dates than 1500BCE but I'm bit lazy to find specific ones right now. Wiener, 2015 paper do include 15th-century so yeah. I did add a paragraph of refutation to at least reduce the massiveness a bit. I'm definitely with you on this weakness of archaeological argument.
On the subject of radiocarbon, all radiocarbon papers, at least I have read, do report calibration used, so I'm able to incorporate them into the table along with the paper. All 2020s radiocarbon papers are actually a redo of 2000s papers, same samples, same statistical methods, same uncalibrated dates, just with IntCal20. Check their method/data section.
I have zero clue about EC for sure. I just read wikipedia page of EC, and its 2nd sentence is literally "scholarly consensus", so I guessed using "well-established" won't hurt, but maybe not. I leave EC entirely up to you then. I do know accession of Ahmose I is in line with radiocarbon dates tho Aleral Wei (talk) 08:45, 24 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Date of eruption in infobox[edit]

The date in the infobox was changed from c.1600BCE to c.1562BCE. As far as I am aware, the date of the eruption is still disputed, and to refer to 1562BCE in the infobox looks too precise, so I am changing this back to c.1600BCE. What is the best way to refer to the date of the eruption in the infobox? Sweet6970 (talk) 12:05, 16 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Don't change it. 1600 is dumb.Meroitte (talk) 12:34, 9 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Mistaken attribution[edit]

We have the text "yellow fog, a dim sun, then three suns, frost in July, famine, and the withering of all five cereals", and a year of 1618 given (which fits very nicely in Manning's IntCal20 dates). The reference given is "Texts, Storms, and the Thera Eruption" in J. of NE Studies. The problem is, that quote doesn't appear in that article. The article does mention the Chinese record in a footnote, but it is not specific as to date, nor the book the underlying Bamboo Annals are in —- whether translated or not. The best solution would be to find the true source of that quote, and cite it. I was unable to find it after several searches; whereas a less good solution would be to cite the footnote in the article actually referenced, as it gives an approximate date. Also, finding the exact quote in some translation of the Bamboo Annals would be a nice adjunct to the citation already present, as a fallback. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2002:3204:5E35:0:851F:E5D1:1A1F:609D (talk) 20:54, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch! Corrected. --bender235 (talk) 23:06, 9 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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