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NON-HAWAI‘I VOLCANOES,
VOLCANO DEIETIES, AND
VOLCANO LEGENDS
GG 103, Fall 2005
Photo by Dan Johnson
COMPARISON OF VOLCANO SIZES
MT. FUJI
3777 m
above sea level
Mauna Loa
4170 m above sea level
9100 m above ocean floor
MT. ST. Helens
(after 1980 eruption)
2554 m above sea level
SEA LEVEL
OCEAN FLOOR
(from a diagram at the Jaggar Museum, Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park)
Colima Volcano, México, a typical strato- or composite-volcano
Louwala-Clough (Mt. St. Helens)
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
Auckland
Active volcanoes
in Aotearoa
White Island
Rotorua
Taupo
Taranaki
Tongariro cluster
(Ruapehu, Tongariro,
Ngauruhoe)
Ngauruhoe, the embodiment of
Tongariro
Taranaki, who wandered brokenhearted into the sunset (West)
Pihanga, the beautiful
volcano who chose
Tongariro over all others
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?
KUWAE, VANUATU
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 14C dating of his skeleton
14C
dating of carbonized wood in eruption deposits on nearby islands
give eruption dates of between 1420 and 1430
But…
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 1453-1457
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