The Minoan eruption destroyed the settlements that had been built during the Bronze Age and it buried them under thick ash layers. These settlements remained hidden under white pumice. Tones of ash, poisonous gases, floating pumice and tidal waves caused incomparable disasters to many Aegean areas.
Pumice accumulation from the volcanic eruption
The Minonan eruption played a determinant role to the morphology of Santorini. To begin with, it is one of the strongest eruptions recorded during the Historic Years, along with the Tabora and Krakataou volcanos eruption (Indonesia). According to the VEI scale, the volcano of Santorini has 6 degrees and Tabora has 7. However, after some new investigation in Anaphi island, the Minoan eruption must have been much more stronger than what has already been believed so it might have even 7 degrees as far as VEI scale is concerned.
Tambora volcano
Tambora volcano is located in Sambawa island, Indonesia. Its eruption occurred in 1815 and it was the strongest volcanic eruption ever recorded, leaving behind a huge amount of sulphuric acid that arrived in Greenland one year later. More than 15 cubic kilometers of ash and pumice were erupted creating tidal waves due to their vehement fall in the sea. Given that the crater of the volcano is 20 km away from the sea and its altitude is almost 3 km, the tidal waves cannot have been caused by the collapse of the caldera or the magma and sea water touch. However, these waves were 4 m high and a lot of people were died. This eruption affected the climate of the earth as a whole.
Krukatau volcano
Krukata volcano is located in Sunda Straits between Sumatra and Java islands and it belong to the Indonesian volcanic arc. It erupted in 1883 and the bangs of its explosions were heard by the inhabitants of Sri Lanka and Australia, 5,000 km away. An impellent wave caused by the eruption arrived at Germany and the tidal waves caused probably after the collapse of the volcanic column which sent pyroclastic streams to the sea, causing huge waves, travelled twice the earth perimetrically and drifted a lot of ships far away tro the inland.
Unusual vision phenomena were caused by volcanic glass particles that reached the stratosphere where they stayed for a long time. In some areas the sky got dark while in other it was red as if an area was on a fire. According to scientific estimations, the volume of the volcanic erupted was almost 20 cubic kilometers. Thousamd of people died during that eruption too.
Santorini Tambora and Krakatau volcanos
Investigations of the recent eruption of Tambora and Krakatau volcanoes have given us various information concerning the consequences of the Minoan eruption, given that all the three were similar in strength. So, the Minoan eruption must have also affected the areas near it or even some of the remote ones with ash rain falls, earthquakes and tidal waves that were possibly caused either by the collapse of the volcanic column or the collapse of the caldera.