** collapse: Minoan Eruption ( c. 1620 BC )

** Crete: Rise of Minoan civilization.

** Minoan, the script known as Linear A

** Minoan pottery

** Minoan chronology

** Minoan seal-stones

** Minoan religion

** Minoan Modi, a peak sanctuary in eastern Crete

** Minoan Bull-leaper, a bronze in the British Museum

** A massive eruption of the Soufrière Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat leads to evacuation and eventual abandonment of the capital, Plymouth.

** In the Philippines, Mount Pinatubo erupts in the second largest terrestrial eruption of the 20th century ; the final death toll tops 800.

** Toba catastrophe theory, according to which modern human evolution was affected by the Toba eruption

** volcanic eruption

** Mount Rainier Volcano Lahar Warning System, an emergency system designed to assist evacuation in case of an eruption

** August 24, An eruption of Vesuvius destroys much of Pompeii and Herculaneum

** Due to volcanic eruption all residents of Miyakejima evacuate ; cannot return until 2005.

The island is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history: the Minoan eruption ( sometimes called the Thera eruption ), which occurred some 3600 years ago at the height of the Minoan civilization.

The eruption left a large caldera surrounded by volcanic ash deposits hundreds of metres deep and may have led indirectly to the collapse of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete, to the south, through a gigantic tsunami.

The Minoan eruption provides a fixed point for the chronology of the second millennium BC in the Aegean, because evidence of the eruption occurs throughout the region and the site itself contains material culture from outside.

The eruption occurred during the " Late Minoan IA " period at Crete and the " Late Cycladic I " period in the surrounding islands.

The most famous eruption is the Minoan eruption, detailed below.

The northern part of the caldera was refilled by the volcano, then collapsing once more during the Minoan eruption.

Before the Minoan eruption, the caldera formed a nearly continuous ring with the only entrance between the tiny island of Aspronisi and Thera ; the eruption destroyed the sections of the ring between Aspronisi and Therasia, and between Therasia and Thera, creating two new channels.

Satellite image of Thera, centre location of the Minoan eruption, one possible source of seventeenth century BC climatic disturbances

It might have been caused by the Minoan eruption of Thera or the Avellino eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

It might have been caused by the Minoan eruption of Thera which according to the Parian Chronicle occurred in 1627, or the Avellino eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

* The 1628 – 26 BC climate disturbances, usually attributed to the Minoan eruption of Santorini

After the Minoan civilization was devastated by the Thera eruption, Crete developed an Ancient Greece-influenced organization of city states, then successively became part of the Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, the Venetian Republic, the Ottoman Empire, and the modern state of Greece.

By about the 15th century BC a massive volcanic explosion known as the Minoan eruption blew the island of Thera apart, casting more than four times the amount of ejecta as the explosion of Krakatoa and generating a tsunami in the enclosed Aegean that threw pumice up to 250 meters above sea level onto the slopes of Anaphi, 27 km to the east.

* Minoan eruption

* Minoan eruption

Some scientists correlate this event with a volcanic winter, possibly due to the Minoan eruption of Thera circa 1628 BC.