Lone tree reveals end of Minoans

EUROPE - A single olive branch may have solved one of ancient history's most enduring mysteries - when and why did the great Minoan civilisation of the Mediterranean come to a sudden end?

The olive branch was buried during a volcanic eruption on the Aegean island of Thera - now known as Santorini - and scientists believe they can date the precise moment.

Knowing when the Thera disaster occurred is important because the eruption was so immense that it caused the collapse of the Minoan civilisation based on the nearby island of Crete.

Volcanologists estimate that the Thera explosion generated violent tsunamis that thrashed Crete's ports, threw thousands of tonnes of ash and pumice into the atmosphere and created a nuclear winter that destroyed successive harvests.

Scientists have detected ash from the explosion as far away as Greenland in the west, the Black Sea in the east and Egypt in the south. When Professor Walter Friedrich and colleagues at the University of Aarhus in Denmark analysed the branch's growth rings and radio-carbon dates they concluded that the olive tree died between 1627BC and 1600BC.

"This eruption is a global time-marker and an important tool to correlate the times of different cultures," Friedrich said.

Aarhus graduate student Tom Pfeiffer found the branch inside a rockface formed from volcanic debris.

Scientists dated all its 72 growth rings and worked out the year of the tree's death to an accuracy of within 13 years.

The study, published in the journal Science, says that means the Minoan civilisation ended 100 to 150 years earlier than previously thought and thus was not contemporary with the New Kingdom of Egypt - which began in the 16th century BC.

Consequently, the Minoans lived at the time of the Hykos kings of Egypt, whose ancestors came from the Levant, an area of the Middle East that was not thought to have had direct ties with the Minoans.

A separate study in Science, by Professor Sturt Manning of Cornell University in New York, shows that radiocarbon dating of 127 objects recovered from the Theran town of Akrotiri - which was completely buried by the eruption - support the revised timescale.

Professor Colin Renfrew, a distinguished Cambridge archaeologist, said the studies appear to provide convincing evidence to finally put a firm date on the Thera eruption.

However, not all archaeologists are convinced that the eruption on Thera led to a sudden end of Minoan culture.

- INDEPENDENT