Factoring in such evidence, McCoy calculated that Thera had a VEI of 7.0 -- what geologists call colossal and exceedingly rare. In the past 10,000 years only one other volcano has exploded with that kind of gargantuan violence: Tambora, in Indonesia, in 1816, It produced an ash cloud in the upper atmosphere that reflected sunlight back into space and produced a year without a summer.
The cold led to ruinous harvests, hunger and even famine in the US, Europe and Russia.
"I presented this evidence last summer at a meeting," McCoy recalled, "and the comment from the other volcanologists was, `Hey, it was probably larger than Tambora.'"
Some prominent archaeologists have concluded that the volcano's long-term repercussions meant the end of Minoan Crete. For instance, they argue that the revolt of nature over the predictable certainties of Minoan religion probably crippled the authority of the priestly ruling class, weakening its hold on society.
In scholarly articles, Jan Driessen, an archaeologist at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, and Colin F. MacDonald, an archaeologist at the British School in Athens, have argued that changes to Cretan architecture, storage, food production, artistic output and the distribution of riches imply major social dislocations, and perhaps civil war.
By 1450 BC, Mycenaean invaders from mainland Greece seized control of Crete, ending the Minoan era.
Thera's destructiveness was probably the catalyst, Driessen and MacDonald wrote, "that culminated in Crete being absorbed to a greater or lesser extent into the Mycenaean, and therefore, the Greek world."
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