Ancient Disasters
The city of Pompeii:
In the year of 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted in one of the most catastrophic and famous eruptions in history. Historians have learned about the eruption from the eyewitness account of Pliny the Younger, a Roman administrator and poet.[1]
Mount Vesuvius spawned a deadly cloud of stones, ash and fumes to a height of 20.5 miles, spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing.[2] The towns of Pompeii andHerculaneum were obliterated and buried underneath massive pyroclastic flows.[2][1] An estimated 16,000 people died from the eruption.
An estimated 16,000 citizens in the Roman vicinities of Pompeii and Herculaneum perished due to hydrothermal pyroclastic flows. [30][31][32] By 2003 around 1,044 casts made from impressions of bodies in the ash deposits had been recovered in and around Pompeii, with the scattered bones of another 100.[33] The remains of about 332 bodies have been found at Herculaneum (300 in arched vaults discovered in 1980).[34] What percentage these numbers are of the total dead or the percentage of the dead to the total number at risk remain completely unknown.
For more than 1500 years, Pompeii lay buried in Italy. It was found when residents were cleaning up after another major eruption, in 1631 AD. It was not completely uncovered until the 20th century. Then, people learned all to well the horrible fate that had befallen its ancient residents. The agony of their deaths has been immortalized in plaster. Because their bodies rotted away long ago, while entombed in volcanic rock, cavities, like those found in fossils, were left behind. These were filled with plaster and what came out were near-perfect statues of the people who died in Pompeii, as they had died.
The eruption lasted two days. The morning of the first day was perceived as normal by the only eyewitness to leave a surviving document, Pliny the Younger. In the middle of the day an explosion threw up a high-altitude column from which ash began to fall, blanketing the area. Rescues and escapes occurred during this time. At some time in the night or early the next day pyroclastic flows in the close vicinity of the volcano began. Lights were seen on the mountain interpreted as fires. People as far away as Misenum fled for their lives. The flows were rapid-moving, dense and very hot, knocking down wholly or partly all structures in their path, incinerating or suffocating all population remaining there and altering the landscape, including the coastline. These were accompanied by additional light tremors and a mild tsunami in the Bay of Naples. By evening of the second day the eruption was over, leaving only haze in the atmosphere through which the sun shone weakly.
Pliny the Younger wrote an account of the eruption --
Broad sheets of flame were lighting up many parts of Vesuvius; their light and brightness were the more vivid for the darkness of the night... it was daylight now elsewhere in the world, but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any night.[9]
The Helike earthquake and tsunami:
On a winter night in 373 BC, a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami destroyed and submerged Helike, the principal Greek city on the southwest shore of the Gulf of Corinth. Helike had been founded in the Bronze Age and its pan-Hellenic sanctuary of Helikonian Poseidon was known through the Classical world (Katsonopoulou 1999, 2002). Helike led the twelve cities of the first Achaean League, and founded colonies, including Priene in Asia Minor and Sybaris in South Italy. The dramatic destruction of Helike was widely discussed by many Greek and Roman authors (Appendix A) and may have inspired Plato, then in his prime, to contrive the myth of Atlantis (Appendix B).
Helike was submerged in the Gulf of Corinth by an earthquake and a tsunami in 373 BC. It remains submerged to this day. Ancient writers commented on the destruction and some mentioned that you could see the ruins beneath the water for hundreds of years after the disaster. It is assumed that a number of people lost their lives, but how many is uncertain.
The search for Helike did not begin until the end of the past century. Since then, relics of Helike and, interestingly, other towns have been found. Walls, walkways, coins and more have been viewed and photographed. This is yet another possible scene of Atlantis, according to some. However, the destruction of Helike happened in Plato’s lifetime. He wrote that it happened 9,000 years before his time. It could have been inspiration for fiction, though.
A number of other, smaller, natural disasters occurred throughout ancient times. People were subject to them then as much as we are today. It makes you wonder how many civilizations were destroyed by natural disaster that we have no knowledge of, as of yet.
In the year of 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted in one of the most catastrophic and famous eruptions in history. Historians have learned about the eruption from the eyewitness account of Pliny the Younger, a Roman administrator and poet.[1]
Mount Vesuvius spawned a deadly cloud of stones, ash and fumes to a height of 20.5 miles, spewing molten rock and pulverized pumice at the rate of 1.5million tons per second, ultimately releasing a hundred thousand times the thermal energy released by the Hiroshima bombing.[2] The towns of Pompeii andHerculaneum were obliterated and buried underneath massive pyroclastic flows.[2][1] An estimated 16,000 people died from the eruption.
An estimated 16,000 citizens in the Roman vicinities of Pompeii and Herculaneum perished due to hydrothermal pyroclastic flows. [30][31][32] By 2003 around 1,044 casts made from impressions of bodies in the ash deposits had been recovered in and around Pompeii, with the scattered bones of another 100.[33] The remains of about 332 bodies have been found at Herculaneum (300 in arched vaults discovered in 1980).[34] What percentage these numbers are of the total dead or the percentage of the dead to the total number at risk remain completely unknown.
For more than 1500 years, Pompeii lay buried in Italy. It was found when residents were cleaning up after another major eruption, in 1631 AD. It was not completely uncovered until the 20th century. Then, people learned all to well the horrible fate that had befallen its ancient residents. The agony of their deaths has been immortalized in plaster. Because their bodies rotted away long ago, while entombed in volcanic rock, cavities, like those found in fossils, were left behind. These were filled with plaster and what came out were near-perfect statues of the people who died in Pompeii, as they had died.
The eruption lasted two days. The morning of the first day was perceived as normal by the only eyewitness to leave a surviving document, Pliny the Younger. In the middle of the day an explosion threw up a high-altitude column from which ash began to fall, blanketing the area. Rescues and escapes occurred during this time. At some time in the night or early the next day pyroclastic flows in the close vicinity of the volcano began. Lights were seen on the mountain interpreted as fires. People as far away as Misenum fled for their lives. The flows were rapid-moving, dense and very hot, knocking down wholly or partly all structures in their path, incinerating or suffocating all population remaining there and altering the landscape, including the coastline. These were accompanied by additional light tremors and a mild tsunami in the Bay of Naples. By evening of the second day the eruption was over, leaving only haze in the atmosphere through which the sun shone weakly.
Pliny the Younger wrote an account of the eruption --
Broad sheets of flame were lighting up many parts of Vesuvius; their light and brightness were the more vivid for the darkness of the night... it was daylight now elsewhere in the world, but there the darkness was darker and thicker than any night.[9]
The Helike earthquake and tsunami:
On a winter night in 373 BC, a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami destroyed and submerged Helike, the principal Greek city on the southwest shore of the Gulf of Corinth. Helike had been founded in the Bronze Age and its pan-Hellenic sanctuary of Helikonian Poseidon was known through the Classical world (Katsonopoulou 1999, 2002). Helike led the twelve cities of the first Achaean League, and founded colonies, including Priene in Asia Minor and Sybaris in South Italy. The dramatic destruction of Helike was widely discussed by many Greek and Roman authors (Appendix A) and may have inspired Plato, then in his prime, to contrive the myth of Atlantis (Appendix B).
Helike was submerged in the Gulf of Corinth by an earthquake and a tsunami in 373 BC. It remains submerged to this day. Ancient writers commented on the destruction and some mentioned that you could see the ruins beneath the water for hundreds of years after the disaster. It is assumed that a number of people lost their lives, but how many is uncertain.
The search for Helike did not begin until the end of the past century. Since then, relics of Helike and, interestingly, other towns have been found. Walls, walkways, coins and more have been viewed and photographed. This is yet another possible scene of Atlantis, according to some. However, the destruction of Helike happened in Plato’s lifetime. He wrote that it happened 9,000 years before his time. It could have been inspiration for fiction, though.
A number of other, smaller, natural disasters occurred throughout ancient times. People were subject to them then as much as we are today. It makes you wonder how many civilizations were destroyed by natural disaster that we have no knowledge of, as of yet.