Volcanic activity generally does one of two thing : itgiveslife , andtakeslife away . People are more conversant with the latter concept , and there are great deal of volcanic eruptions around the worldly concern that have lived up to this reputation . Vesuvius’sdestructionof Pompeii and Herculaneum is perhaps the most well - known example , but lest we draw a blank , volcano have sometimes ended integral civilizations : Santorini’scataclysmic eruptionwiped out the Minoans 3,650 years ago .
novel inquiry draft at the annual gather of theEuropean Geosciences Union(EGU ) in Vienna pinpoints another civilisation - disrupting – if not destroying – volcanic outbreak . Based on a range of samples of ancient volcanic ash , a gigantic blowup atEl Chichón , a immense lava dome in Mexico , may have dive the Central American Mayan civilization into chaos in the 6th century .
“ The heaviness of the local deposition designate that this was a big eruption , ” Kees Nooren , the study ’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate at Utrecht University in the Netherlands , toldBBC News . “ We would expect that it was organize towards the Mayan lowland . ”
El Chichón is best known to those in the region for its devastating1982 blast . After the lava dome ’s peak collapsed , huge pyroclastic flows zoom out and down the wing of the volcano , burying nine villages and kill 1,900 citizenry .
Far from just quickly consuming people , this volcanic eructation ’s destructiveness carry on long after the main human action had lessen . 24,000 square kilometers ( 9,270 straight miles ) of the surrounding landscape experienced meaning ash fallout , which ruined swaths of coffee bean , drinking chocolate , and banana crop .
El Chichón , seen two month after its horrific 1982 eruption . USGS
As turbulent as this was , this fresh enquiry reveals that a far more severe eruption may have coincide with the “ hiatus ” in the once - great Mayan civilisation , several decades within the 6th century wherein many settlements were abandoned , their cultural output began to significantly stumble , and there was well-defined political instability . Volcanic activity has been suggested before as a likely cause of this hiatus , but this picky squad of investigator recall that they ’ve finally found warm grounds for this .
When volcano erupt , they spurt out vast quantities of S as a hunky-dory aerosol . S found as far as ice in the North and South Poles indicates that there was a reasonably immense eruption somewhere on Earth in the twelvemonth 540 , which pass to mark the very beginning of the Mayan hiatus .
Chemically , these remote ash deposits can be colligate back to the very specific magma found beneath El Chichón . geological dating of volcanic ash get hold in Mexico confirms that an extravasation at El Chichón take place in 540 .
The level of atomic number 16 found in the ice cores suggests that the eruption was powerful enough to darken the sky and cause a humble period of sudden regional temperature reduction . The thickness of the Mexican ash deposits also indicates that surround surround would have been cake in suffocating ash tree .
A separatestudynotes that the polar atomic number 16 signatures could also be link up to a 2nd eruption , perhaps in Alaska , which occurred in the year 536 . When combined with the El Chichon extravasation , the Mayans would have feel nothing short of a miniskirt - apocalypse , with S aerosol can effectively scrub a succession of warmer summer , and ash fallout majorly disrupting their Department of Agriculture and lay to rest their settlement .
Volcanic activity may have been to blame for the Mayan hiatus , then , but the reasons for the civilization’sultimate downfallremain arguable .
