Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
beliefs: Aztecs claimed in the sixteenth century that eruptions
of Popocatepetl were the response of local gods to the Spanish
conquistadors profaning their temples. Over 300 years later, the
natives of Lake Ilopango in El Salvador attributed the 1879-80
eruption of the Islas Quemadas volcano to the anger of the
goddess of the lake at the introduction of a government steam-
boat service. To appease her, the local population fled back to
time-honoured traditional practice: they bound a young child
hand and foot and threw him into the lake.
The Swahili Kilima Njaro is translated as 'Shining Mountain',
an appropriate name for Kilimanjaro, at 5,895 metres the world's
highest single mountain, unconnected to a range. This has not
erupted in recorded history, although its neighbour in the African
Rift Valley, Ol Doinyo Lengai, is active, having erupted many
times in the last century. Its name in the Masai language means
'Mountain of God', and far from being a source of terror, it is
seen as a bringer of fertility and bounty. When it erupts, nursing
mothers express their breast milk on its flanks in gratitude.
In the North Island of New Zealand, according to Maori
legend, Taranaki (also known as Mount Egmont) and Ruapehu
both fell in love with Tongariro, present-day Ngauruhoe. Taranaki
attacked the volcano Ruapehu who, in response, poured showers
of boiling water from his crater lake. Taranaki then erupted
stones that destroyed Ruapehu's cone. Ruapehu swallowed and
spat them out over Taranaki, who fled out to sea down the valley
of Wanganui. The Maori still do not bury their dead on the line
between Egmont and Ruapehu, in case they start fighting again.
When another North Island volcano, Tarawera, erupted in 1886
three villages were buried and more than 300 people died. The
Maori believed that the villagers had either eaten wild honey, an
act that was taboo, or had become degenerate through contact
with Europeans.
These and other myths from volcanic parts of the world revolve
around love and hate, peace and war, mercy and punishment,
religion and superstition. All are fundamental qualities in human
nature that have independently developed to counter, explain and
try to quell what is a simple and unavoidable physical fact: that
