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Benvenuti in queste pagine dedicate a scienza, storia ed arte. Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, Torino

Friday, December 31, 2010

Thera and the biblical plagues

Thera, a volcano in the Mediterranean sea, produced with its explosion  around 3,500 year ago, one of the biggest cataclysms in the human history. The remains of  Thera are the Mediterranean islands of Santorini,  north of Crete.  As we can read from an article of Telegraph, the volcanic ash of eruption could have clashed with thunderstorms above Egypt, producing severe  hail storms (one of the biblical plagues).
According to Prof.Trevisanato, a Canadian biologist, another plague, the locusts, could be explained by the volcanic fall out from the ash. The ash fall out caused weather anomalies, which produced higher precipitations and humidity, fostering the presence of the locusts. The volcanic ash could also have caused the plague of darkness. In fact, pumice stones have been found during excavations of Egyptian ruins despite there not being any volcanoes in Egypt.
Very interesting article.