Photo by Dan Johnson NON-HAWAI‘I VOLCANOES, VOLCANO DEIETIES, AND VOLCANO LEGENDS GG 103, Fall 2005
OCEAN FLOOR SEA LEVEL MT. FUJI 3777 m above sea level MT. ST. Helens (after 1980 eruption) 2554 m above sea level Mauna Loa 4170 m above sea level 9100 m above ocean floor (from a diagram at the Jaggar Museum, Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park) COMPARISON OF VOLCANO SIZES
Colima Volcano, México, a typical strato- or composite-volcano
Louwala-Clough (Mt. St. Helens)
was once the maiden Loowit, who was turned into this beautiful volcano She was fought over by two warriors: Wy’east (Mt. Hood), who sends lava streams and throws hot stones Pahto (Mt. Adams), who mainly hunches over gloomily
Mt. Mazama (Crater Lake)
llao and Skell were two warriors who fought a huge battle, probably an account of the caldera-forming eruption of Mt. Mazama ~6000 years ago Now, Llao and Skell stare at each other across the lake
Volcanoes of México
Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl, the angry warrior and his sleeping beloved
Popocatépetl is active, and has been erupting off and on since the mid 1990s Iztaccihuatl has been carved by glaciers, and therefore hasn’t erupted for at least ~10,000 years
AOTEAROA
Active volcanoes in Aotearoa Auckland White Island Tongariro cluster (Ruapehu, Tongariro, Ngauruhoe) Taupo Rotorua Taranaki
Ngauruhoe, the embodiment of Tongariro Pihanga, the beautiful volcano who chose Tongariro over all others Taranaki, who wandered broken- hearted into the sunset (West)
Geologic maps of part of the Central Volcanic Zone, North Island
The Kuwae (Vanuatu) eruption in the 1400s: when was it, and did it have global effects?
A legend tells of Raherir, a man so old he couldn’t move, but who was kept alive by a spell. He instructed his sons on how to cause a tsunami that would drown him, and this tsunami also killed many people. Many oral histories tell of a huge eruption “When embellishments common to oral folklore are filtered out, it appears that after several strong earthquakes of increasing magnitude, Kuwae tilted and broke into sveral pieces while a gigantic eruption was ocurring.” (Monzier et al., 1994) A young chief, Ti Tongoa Liseiriki, was one of the people who re-settled the nearby islands after the eruption So…when was the eruption? Ti Tongoa Liseiriki died in 1475 based on 14 C dating of his skeleton 14 C dating of carbonized wood in eruption deposits on nearby islands give eruption dates of between 1420 and 1430 KUWAE, VANUATU
Records from the Ming Dynasty (China) for the spring of 1453 mention: - "Non-stop snow damaged wheat crops" - dust darkened the sky - "Several feet of snow fell in six provinces; tens of thousands of people froze to death". - Early in 1454, "it snowed for 40 days south of the Yangtze River and countless died of cold and famine". - Lakes and rivers froze, and the Yellow Sea was ice-bound even 20 kilometers (13 miles) from shore. In Sweden, corn tithes fell to zero In W. North America, Europe, and China, tree rings show stunted growth from Constantinople fell to the Ottoman sultan Mehmet II, accompanied by lurid sunrises and sunsets as well as a strange fog Ice cores in Antarctica show increased acidity in the 1453 layer But…