.... to continue on from my last blog now the festivities have calmed down, this is part two of the disaster of Hellenic. We finished off introducing one cool dude called Aristotle. Boy he was a fabulous chap indeed, it was his new way of thinking that has had a very influential effect on what we know about the world today. You see, when catastrophe happened in Hellenic, Aristotle looked for more "earthly" explanations. In a culture where the gods were so important, this was a radical approach in trying to understand the world.
Aristotle was particularly intrigued by the particular meteorological conditions that occurred at the time of the Hellenic disaster. He came up with a theory that the earthquakes were a physical product, not of Poseidon's supernatural abilities, but of "winds" trapped inside the earth, it sounds farfetched but he may have well been on the right track.
The region of Greece in the north is the most earthquake prone part of Europe. It is where Aristotle first made his observations, today, geologists who work in this area are looking into the relationship of gas and earthquaked. It turns out, the gas trapped may well play a roll, but, not in the way Aristotle thought. You see gas, particularly carbon dioxide, is naturally produced deep beneath the earths service. This rises up, getting trapped along fault lines where the rocks are tightly packed together. This gas might do one of two things. As it is under great amounts of pressure, it could force it's way up between the rocks in the fault, eventually lubricating them so they slip - herego, earthquake. But most geologists now believe that the rocks of the fault move all by themselves to cause seismic activity, this just allows the gas to escape.
Scientists are working today, looking into the escaping gas as a way to help predict when earthquakes can strike. Trapped gases may not cause earthquakes but at least Aristotle's observations were on the right track, importantly he was taking a stab at understanding the world around him from a purely scientific point of view, he proposed a natural cause for what was otherwise regarded as a supernatural event.
However, although Aristotle made some headway in understanding some geological processes, most ancient greeks still believed that the running of the word, and any major catastrophes were created by their assorted gods! It was almost 700 years after the catastrophe in Hellenic, before our beliefs in how the world worked around us, that we saw a dramatic change, and it all happened in Italy from the time of the Romans.
to be continued...................
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