The eruption of Thera

The volcano at Santorini erupts catastrophically in the mid-second millennium BCE, ejecting tens of cubic kilometres of material and collapsing the island into a caldera. The Minoan town of Akrotiri is buried under metres of ash and preserved with its frescoes and multi-storey houses intact, though its inhabitants appear to have evacuated. Radiocarbon puts the eruption around 1600 BCE while Egyptian-linked archaeology has favoured a century later, and the disagreement is still unresolved.