“For the Minoans, the end of empire was a slow and painful death, not a sudden execution. I could hardly bear to think of it. All that brilliance, all that invention – and all their cultural and technological chutzpah lost…”
Plato – “… In a single day and night of misfortune, all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared – into the depths of the sea…”
In Crete the human casualties, the destruction of houses and temples, and above all the total annihilation of the shipping on which the island’s prosperity relied must have been crippling. After the volcano came days, possibly weeks, of toxic gas and lethal ash falling thick upon the ground, suffocating people and plants and poisoning the water supplies. The catastrophe appeared to be coming from the very skies the Minoans had studied for so long. They must have thought the gods had abandoned them.
Further reading:
Plato, Timaeus and Critias -Oxford World Classics, trans. Robin Waterfield:
http://www.amazon.com/Timaeus-Critias-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0192807358
Bacon and Galanopoulos – Atlantis: the truth behind the legend:
http://www.amazon.com/Atlantis-Behind-Legend-G-Galanopoulos/dp/0171470222
