 The Bronze Age, as it is commonly known, was a pivotal era in human history as we re-emerged after the ancient Cataclysm. This was a time when mighty cities sprung up across the Mediterranean before a mysterious collapsed plunged the world into a dark age. It does appear that there has been a major key discovery about an apocalyptic disaster which wiped out an iconic civilization and shaped the story of this fundamentally important period in history. During the mid-2nd millennium BC, one power dominated the Mediterranean. From their capital on Crete, the Minoans' influence reached Cyprus, across the Greek islands and into modern Turkey and the Palestinian coast. They left behind remarkable paintings and pioneered technological advancements like indoor plumbing. They grew and flourished, that is, until one summer, around the year 1600 BC. Then, suddenly the volcano of Thera, on what is now the Greek island of Santorini, erupted with the force of two million Hiroshima bombs. The destruction would have been virtually instant, eradicating all life on the island. The event devastated the maritime trade that was their life blood and the Minoan Empire all but collapsed overnight. In the centuries that followed, they would disappear entirely. Even down to their name, the word Minoan is a Victorian invention. The eruption sent 24 cubic miles of rock into the atmosphere, four times more than the 1883 Krakatoa eruption. It blocked out the sun and threw the world into a period of bitter cold. Famines spread in Egypt as crops failed and evidence of the eruption can be found in the earliest Chinese written chronicles. At the time of King Shah, the sun was dimmed, the records say. Three suns appeared, winter and summer came irregularly, frost in July. They had fixed the date of the eruption of a volcano on Santorini known as Thera in the ancient world. Working out the exact chronology of the era could also help to explain the late Bronze Age collapse, in which civilizations across the Mediterranean were snuffed out one by one and the region was plunged into a dark age. It's possible that the aftermath of the Minoan civilizations fall, destabilized the region and set in motion a long series of events, in motion, which led to a disaster which stopped humanity in its tracks. If the Thera eruption can be anchored to a single year, then this event will be an anchor point from which to scrutinize cultural patterns across a wide region in the mid-2nd millennium BC. Historians once believed this tsunami finished off the Minoans, but the discovery of burnt buildings in major cities suggests the killer wave may have destabilized the civilization and made it unable to resist being overrun by a rival people called the Mycians. Some experts believe the volcanic disaster inspired the story of Atlantis, a naval power based on an island which disappeared into the sea. Charlotte Pearson, an expert on the matter, was asked if she believed the eruption of Thera led to the creation of this myth. She said, I think the natural disasters, be it flood, volcanic eruption, or, as argued for Atlantis, a tsunami caused by an eruption, still engendered a kind of all in modern societies. But imagine what it would be like over 3500 years ago in the quiet of the Aegean Sea when a giant noisy volcanic plume went soaring into the sky and buried the town of Akateri. I can certainly see how such an event could become the stuff of legends. Comments below guys and, as always, thank you for watching.