One of the wall-paintings of Thera, the Minoan city buried in the ash of the eruption of the volcano (thousands of times more violent than Mt. St. Helens, and six times Krakatoa), which caused sherds of ash in the icecaps of Greenland, a permanent disturbance in the tree rings of California’s bristlecone pines, crop failures in China, the legendary plagues of Egypt. Which rewrote geography—left an enormous hole in Santorini and the bottom of the sea, drowned and reconfigured harbors along Crete’s north coast, cut promontories off into islands, and threw great waves thirty miles inland into Turkey, carving channels almost to Mount Ararat.
(from Reading the Stones)
image: Wall-painting with a depiction of lilies from the "House of the Lilies" at Amnisos, 1500 BC, Heraklion Archaeological Museum
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