Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
lost island of Mu in the Pacific, which broke apart and
sank with the loss of millions of inhabitants. Chinese
and Hindu legends also recount lost continents.
Perhaps the most famous lost continent legend is the
story of Atlantis, written by Plato in his
Critias
. He
recounts an Egyptian story that has similarities with
Carthaginian and Phoenician legends. Indeed, if the
Aztecs did migrate from North Africa, the Aztec
legend of a lost island to the east may simply be the
Mediterranean legend transposed and reoriented
to Central America. The disappearance of Atlantis
probably had its origins in the catastrophic eruption of
Santorini around 1470 BC. Greek flood myths refer to
this or similar events that generated tsunami in the
Aegean. It is quite possible that this event entered
other tales in Greek mythology involving fire from the
sky, floating islands and darkening of the sky by Zeus.
The Krakatau eruption of 1883 also spawned many
legends on surrounding islands. Blong (1982) describes
modern legends in Papua New Guinea that can be
related to actual volcanic eruptions in the seventeenth
century. The Pacific region, because of its volcanic
activity, abounds in eruption mythology. For example,
Pele, the fire goddess of Hawaii, is chased by her sister
from island to island eastward across the Pacific. Each
time she takes refuge in a volcano, she is found by
her sister, killed, and then resurrected. Finally, Pele
implants herself triumphantly in the easternmost
island of Hawaii. Remarkably, this legend parallels the
temporal sequence of volcanism in the Hawaiian
Islands.
Earthquakes also get recounted in many myths.
They are attributed by animistic societies in India to
animals trying to get out of the Earth. Sometimes the
whole Earth is viewed as an animal. Ancient Mexicans
viewed the Earth as a gigantic frog that twitched its
skin once in a while. Timorese thought that a giant sup-
ported the Earth on his shoulder and shifted it to the
other side whenever it got too heavy. Greeks did not
ascribe earthquakes to Atlas, but to Poseidon disturb-
ing the waters of the sea and setting off earth tremors.
The oscillating water levels around the Greek islands
during earthquakes were evidence of this god's actions.
In the Bible, earthquakes were used by God to punish
humans for their sins. Sodom and Gomorrah were
destroyed because they refused to give up sins of the
flesh. The fire and brimstone from heaven, mentioned
with these cities' destruction, were most likely associ-
ated with the lightning that is often generated above
earthquakes by the upward movement of dust. Alter-
natively, it may have come from meteorite debris. The
Bible also viewed earthquakes as divine visitation. An
earthquake preceded the arrival of the angel sent to
roll back Christ's tombstone (Matthew 28: 2).
Myths, legends, and the Bible pose a dilemma
because they do not always stand up to scientific
scrutiny as established in the last three centuries. Today
an incident is not credible unless it can be measured,
verified by numerous witnesses, viewed as repeatable,
and certainly published in peer-reviewed literature.
Media accounts, which may be cobbled together and
subject to sensationalism because of the underlying aim
to sell a product, are regarded with suspicion. There is
distrust of events that go unpublished, that occur in
isolated regions, or that are witnessed by societies with
only an oral tradition occurring in isolated regions.
Legends, however, can become credible. Hence, the
Kwenaitchechat legend of a tsunami on the west coast
of the United States suddenly took on scientific accept-
ability when it received front-page coverage in
Nature
.
It was shown - using sophisticated computer modelling
- that the source of a tsunami that struck the east coast
of Japan on 26 January 1700 could have originated only
from the Cascadian subduction zone off the west coast
of the United States. The fact that the legend mentions
water overrunning hilltops has still not been explained.
Sometime in the future, we will find it just as hard to
believe that published statements were accepted as
articles of faith when they were scrutinized by only two
referees who often came from an entrenched inner
circle of associates. Certainly, the rise of information
on the Internet is challenging twentieth century
perceptions of scientific scrutiny.
Catastrophism vs. uniformitarianism
(Hugg
ett, 1997)
Until the middle of the eighteenth century, western
civilization regarded hazards as 'acts of God' in the
strict biblical sense, as punishment for people's sins.
On 1 November 1755, an earthquake, with a possible
surface magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter scale,
destroyed Lisbon, then a major center of European
civilization. Shortly after the earthquake, a tsunami
swept into the city and, over the next few days, fire
consumed what was left. The event sent shock waves
through the salons of Europe at the beginning of The
Enlightenment. The earthquake struck on All Saints'
Day, when many Christian believers were praying in
