Volcano

Nature and Culture

James Hamilton

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781861899552
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Science General
• Index: Biological Sciences

For years, tourists have trekked across cracked rock at Hawaii's Kilauea volcano to witness the awe-inspiring sight of creeping lava and its devastating effects on the landscape. In 2010, Eyjafjallajökull erupted in Iceland, stranding travelers as a cloud of ash covered western and northern Europe, causing the largest disruption of air travel since World War II. And just a few months later, Mount Merapi blew in Indonesia, killing over 350 people and displacing over 350, 000 others, awakening people once more to the dangerous potential of these sleeping giants.

Though today largely dormant, volcanoes continue to erupt across the world, reminding us of their sheer physical power. In Volcano, James Hamilton explores the cultural history generated by the violence and terrifying beauty of volcanoes. He describes the reverberations of early eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna in Greek and Roman myth. He also examines the depiction of volcanoes in art—from the earliest known wall painting of an erupting volcano in 6200 BCE to the distinctive colors of Andy Warhol and Michael Sandle's exploding mountains. Surveying a number of twenty-first-century works, Hamilton shows that volcanoes continue to influence the artistic imagination. Combining established figures such as Joseph Wright and J. M. W. Turner with previously unseen perspectives, this richly illustrated book will appeal to anyone interested in science as well as the cultural impact of these spectacular natural features.

1 ‘The Whole Sea Boiled and Blazed’

When we follow humanity in its earliest forms, creeping tentatively out from the African Rift Valley or, later, from what is now Australia, and moving gradually and ignorantly across the oceans by means of Continental Drift, we are traversing a period of two and a half million years or more. Adding on another ten or twelve thousand years, a blink of an eye by comparison, we can watch settlement in the Middle East, in the Americas, continental Europe and Southeast Asia. Here we arrive at the beginnings of ritual, the making of tools, and the first groupings of people cooperating to develop agriculture, the beginning of language and narrative, and the beginning too of accounting and writing. Across all these expanses of time volcanoes blasted from much the same weak points in the earth’s surface as they had blasted for aeons before. It’s all the same to them. They carry on in much the same way today. Many weak points have cooled down and dried up, but the map of the earth’s cracks, now, bears a clear relationship to the map of the crust before Continental Drift, and is a direct product of the earth’s cooling movements.

Volcanoes were at work long before any form of humanity began to populate the planet and take notice. Thus to human history, though both localized and scattered, they are a given, constant presence. As the most violent terrestrial outrage that the planet can offer and humanity can witness, volcanic action may thus be the source of the first faint distant tracings of narrative on human memory.

Such tracings come down to us intermittently and partially. We only have such artefacts as have been discovered, and such myths as have been recorded. When the volcano Hasan Dağ in the Karapinar field in Anatolia, western Turkey, erupted in around 6200 BC, it caused sufficient disturbance and alarm in Çatal Hüyük, 90 miles (145 km) away, to seep into the local consciousness of this very large and long-established settlement, and become the subject of a wall painting of the volcano erupting over tightly packed houses.¹ Çatal Hüyük, which was first excavated in the late 1950s and into the following decade, was by the standards of this early period a sophisticated place, the world’s first town of up to about 10,000 people. The inhabitants, who lived in close-packed mud huts with white plastered interiors and rudimentary furniture, created a rural economy through farming the surrounding Anatolian plain. While the wall painting may have been a direct reaction, however long delayed it might have been, to the eruption, the fertility of the soil and thus the people’s living was the product of the eruptive local volcano. This society had been settled long enough for it to develop its own manufacturing infrastructure, from pottery to plough-making, rising in sophistication to the programmatic creation of wall paintings and the making of blades from obsidian, a volcanic product.²

If the residents of Çatal Hüyük had developed a narrative tradition in which the volcano played a part, it has not come down to us. It is not for another 4,000 years that myth begins to shade into history when the volcano Santorini, now named Thera, the island in the Aegean Sea more or less equidistant between mainland Greece and Turkey, exploded around 1620 BC in what was the greatest event of natural destruction in recorded human history. Nearby Akrotiri was buried under lava and ash, while the tsunami that the eruption generated grew into a ten-metre high wave. This, after an unbroken run to Crete, cast itself on Knossos. The immediate destruction was one of the factors that precipitated the downfall of the Minoan civilization and, radiating in all directions, the tsunami brought havoc to the Aegean and its littoral. The Santorini eruption is one of the suggested causes of the disappearance of Atlantis – if, indeed, Atlantis ever existed.

A group of volcanoes whose perturbations also left their traces on classical myth are the Lipari islands, a volcanic chain north of Sicily. The southernmost of these, Vulcano, which passed through a long eruptive period around 400 BC, was explained in Greek (and Roman) myth as the furnace and forge of Hephaistos, the god of fire, or his Roman equivalent, Vulcan. When the mountain erupted, as it did regularly in classical times, it was thought to signal that Hephaistos was at work. The Lipari islands were both deadly and convenient, as Demeter (Roman: Ceres), the goddess of the fertility of the earth, used them, and their near neighbours, Vesuvius, Ischia and Etna, as torches to light the way for the Sirens in their search for her lost daughter Persephone. The 400 BC eruption of Vulcano may have been the source of Thucydides’ observation in The Peloponnesian War that ‘at night great flames are seen rising up, and in day-time the place is under a cloud of smoke’.³ Mount Etna on Sicily, part of the same volcanic system, was also said to be the workshop of Hephaistos/ Vulcan, here accompanied by one-eyed giants, the Cyclopes. These were the same bad-tempered oversized monsters who were so inhospitable to Odysseus (Ulysses) when he and his companions landed on their island in Homer’s Odyssey.⁴ In a connected myth, it was believed that the repulsive multi-headed giant Typhon, offspring of Gaia, the primal goddess of the earth, and Tartarus, the god of the wind, was imprisoned by Zeus, where ‘he’s lying just beside the straits of the sea, trapped beneath the roots of Mount Etna’.⁵ Tossing and turning still, he causes the ructions and eruptions that are a regular and continuing feature of Etna. Taking the myth of the Cyclopes yet deeper, the single, circular eye of this beast is reflected in the single, circular form of the crater: thus the volcano becomes the creature within. Does Homer’s epic tale, itself a late compilation of centuries of oral tradition, dimly throw back at us the shadow of earliest human memory and explication?

Other gods and demi-gods are buried under Vesuvius and Etna, according to myth. Enceladus rebelled against the gods and is buried beneath Etna, while his brother, Mimas, was buried by Hephaistos beneath Vesuvius. In the Aeneid, Virgil’s story of the origin of Rome written in the last two decades of the first century BC, we read one of the most dramatic accounts of an eruption in all classical literature. This is Virgil’s account of Etna in full flow:

The harbour there is spacious enough, and calm, for no winds reach it, but close by Etna thunders and its affrighting showers fall. Sometimes it ejects up to high heaven a cloud of utter black, bursting forth in a tornado of pitchy smoke with white-hot lava, and shoots tongues of flame to lick the stars. Sometimes the mountain tears out the rocks which are its entrails and hurls them upwards. Loud is the roar each time the pit in its depth boils over, and condenses this molten stone and hoists it high in the air.⁶

While volcanic activity provided a natural source for the imaginative myths of the ancient Greeks and Romans, it also drove early philosophers to attempt to explain what was going on so violently out of sight. Discussing the four great rivers of the earth, Plato writes in Phaedo of one of them, Pyriphlegethon, which

pours into a huge region all ablaze with fire, and forms a lake larger than our own sea [the Mediterranean], boiling with water and mud; from there it proceeds in a circle, turbid and muddy, and coiling about within the earth it reaches the borders of the Acherusian Lake, amongst other places, but does not mingle with its water; then after repeated coiling underground, it discharges lower down in Tartarus; this is the river they name Pyriphlegethon, and it is from this that the lava-streams blast fragments up at various points upon the earth.⁷

Plato described the formation of lava or obsidian: ‘Sometimes when the earth has melted because of the fire, and then cooled again, a black-coloured stone is formed.’ Being cast into Pyriphlegethon is the fate that awaits ‘those who have outraged their parents’ – so watch out, kids. The Roman hero of Virgil’s Aeneid, Aeneas, was shocked when visiting the Underworld to find Pyriphlegethon, ‘sweeping round with a current of white-hot flames and boulders that spun and roared’.⁸

The Greek dramatist Aeschylus may have witnessed the 479 BC eruption of Etna, or at least some smoke and rumbling, when he visited the settlements of Magna Graecia in Sicily in the 470s. Indeed he died there in 456/455 when, according to legend, an eagle dropped a tortoise on his head from a great height. A contemporary of Aeschylus, the lyric poet Pindar, described Etna, ‘from whose depths belch forth holiest springs of unapproachable fire’.⁹

The first recorded student of Etna was the fifth-century BC Greek philosopher Empedocles, who formulated the idea of the four elements, Earth, Air, Fire and Water. However, he used the mountain not as a laboratory to investigate the workings of the elements, but as a means to show himself to be the equal of the gods. There are variations in reports on the manner of his death: one tells that he wished to be immortal, and so threw himself into the crater. Unfortunately for his reputation one of his sandals slipped off as he fell, and this was found and gave the game away. Another legend tells that he believed he would return from the volcano as a god among men, while a third relates that he did indeed throw himself in, but was ejected during an eruption and landed on the moon, where he still survives by drinking dew.

Many classical philosophers grappled with the idea and purpose of volcanoes. Aristotle in Meteorology (fourth century BC) saw the earth as a living organism, subject to convulsions and spasms like any creature. He proposed that the fire beneath the earth is caused by ‘the air being broken into particles which burst into flames from the effects of the shocks and friction of the wind when it plunges into narrow passages’.¹⁰ He coined the word ‘crater’ (‘cup’ in Greek) to describe the dished form of volcano summits. Strabo in his Geography (first century AD) discussed the world’s volcanoes, in particular those in and around the Mediterranean. He described Sicily as having been ‘cast up from the deeps by the fire of Aetna and remained there; and the same is true both of the Lipari Islands and the Pithecussae’ (Capri, Ischia and neighbouring islands).¹¹ ‘Midway between Thera and Therasia’, Strabo added, ‘fires broke forth from the sea and continued for four whole days, so that the whole sea boiled and blazed, and the fires cast up an island which was gradually elevated as though by levers and consisted of burning masses.’¹²

Moving out beyond Europe, there are potent myths that weave in and out of the historical record. In the book of Psalms (18:7–8), God is described in terrifying terms:

Then the earth shook and trembled; the foundations also of the hills moved and were shaken because he was wroth. There went up smoke out of his nostrils, and fires out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.

This sounds like a graphic description of an earthquake and an erupting volcano. Sodom and Gomorrah are described as being destroyed by what looks like volcanic action:

Then the Lord trained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground (Genesis 19:24–5).

While Sodom and Gomorrah were real cities of the plain near the Dead Sea, and archaeological evidence has established that they were destroyed by a natural cataclysm around 1900 BC, this is likely to have been an earthquake rather than a volcano, as no volcanic activity has taken place in that region in the past 4,000 years. Muddled superstition and dogma led to the obvious conclusion that volcanoes marked the entrance to hell. Following Plato, and in commentary on the Book of Revelation, St Augustine wrote in City of God of hell as having ‘a lake of fire and brimstone’,¹³ while variously Etna and Vulcano were both believed to be mouths of hell. Drawing boundaries out into the cold north, the Cistercian priest Herbert of Clairvaux opined, after its 1104 eruption, that Hekla in Iceland was the mouth of hell. This story was repeated again and again until Jules Verne used Hekla and another Icelandic volcano, Snaefells, as the gateways to the centre of the earth in Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1864).

The embryonic Icelandic parliament, the Althing, met in AD 1000 at Thingvellir, a volcanic cliff with remarkable acoustic properties some 48 kilometres (30 miles) northeast of Reykjavík. The wide plain that stretches away from Thingvellir marks the line of the geological fault dividing the North American and the Eurasian plates. Running approximately down the centre line of the Atlantic Ocean, it passes through or near the Azores, Ascension island and Tristan da Cunha. Disputing parties met at Thingvellir to reach a decision about the religion of Iceland: to choose between worship of the old Nordic gods, or the new Christianity. During the interminable meeting a messenger brought news that fire and molten rock were erupting from the ground near the village of the chief Nordic advocate, and threatening destruction. Followers of the local pantheon interpreted this as meaning that the gods were angry at the proposal. But wait, said the advocate of Christianity, ‘with whom are the gods angry? They cannot be angry at what is not there, as there is no Christianity in the island. They are angry, instead, with the old ways.’ That turned the vote, and the Christian lobby won the day.

Across the globe, the volcanoes in the Pacific are the home of the goddess Pelé. Born in Tahiti, Pelé was chased after falling out with her sister Namakaokahai, 4,000 km (2,500 miles) away to the Hawaiian archipelago. As she swam from island to island, northwest to southeast, Pelé left craters and mountains behind her – Diamond Head, on the island of Oahu; Haleakala, on Maui; and Kilauea, on the island of Hawaii. This progression matches the modern discovery that the volcanoes become younger towards the southeast. Pelé’s flight ended in Hawaii, where she created Halemaumau, the crater of Kilauea. There, according to the legend, she still lives and causes eruptions. Pelé has a short temper, and can open up craters with a kick of her heel, hurling lava about wildly. But before each eruption, she is said to give some warning by appearing either as an old woman, or a beautiful girl. Pouring as it does from a crack in the earth, Hawaiian lava has created a vaginal form for its crater. Thus local tradition has it that an eruption is a sign of the menstruation of Pelé, in which the lava flows to the sea, the place of ritual cleaning.

Every year Hawaiians gather in ceremonial costume at the edge of Kilauea to honour Pelé. In 1824 Kapiolani, the Christian wife of an island chief, tried to enrage the goddess by throwing stones into the crater. Pelé remained calm, and this persuaded many to convert to Christianity. When a lava flow threatened the city of Hilo in 1881, Hawaii’s indigenous religion had been replaced almost totally by Christianity. Awareness and respect for Pelé was still widespread, however, and an appeal was made to the Hawaiian princess Ruth Keelikolani to intercede with Pelé. Ruth did so, and the flow stopped just outside Hilo.

The Native Americans of Oregon believe that a destructive fire god lived in Mount Mazama, and a beneficent snow god in nearby Mount Shasta. The two struggled, and the snow god won, decapitating its enemy. To mark this victory of good over evil, the crater of Mount Mazama filled with water. Formed 6,000 years ago, this may make it the second earliest eruption recorded in legend, after Çatal Hüyük. Shasta was considered to be the centre of creation, the Great Spirit having created it out of ice and snow from heaven. Using the resulting heap as a stepping stone, he created the flora and fauna of the earth. Shasta retains its religious significance, being the base for dozens of New Age sects, an alleged UFO landing place, and the way into the fifth dimension. It is also a very popular ski resort.

Further north in the Cascades chain is Mount St Helens, which erupted with such violence in 1980. This too enters Native American legend, which explains something of its eruptive nature, and that of its neighbouring volcanoes. Legend follows the typical pattern of quarrels among gods or spirits over land or love, in the case of the Cascades range the love being that for the beautiful Loowit, who was fought over by two young Indian nobles, Pahto and Wy’east. Becoming furious at the devastation the quarrel had caused – the shaking of the earth and the creation of the Cascades – the chief of the gods struck his sons down. Pahto became what is now Mount Adams, Wy’east became Mount Hood, and Loowit was transformed into Mount St Helens, originally ‘Louwala-Clough’, translated as ‘Smoking Mountain’. And so the legends go on. In Wyoming, the Devil’s Tower, a column of lava isol...