The Awesome Power of Volcanos

From Pompeii to Krakatoa, volcanoes have been the subject of art and literature for centuries. What makes them so compelling? Alastair Sooke finds out. 28 March 2017

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“There’s always something new to learn about volcanoes,” says David Pyle, professor of earth sciences at the University of Oxford. “Around 600 volcanoes have erupted within the last 200 years, and 1,500 could erupt again within the next few decades.” He smiles. “But we are never clever enough to work out what volcanoes will do next. The deadliest eruptions have always been of quiet volcanoes.”Despite the best efforts of modern science, massive eruptions can still result in catastrophic loss of life. Since 1900, the two worst volcanic events were the eruption of Mount Pelée on the Caribbean island of Martinique, on 8 May 1902, which destroyed the city of Saint-Pierre, killing 28,000 people; and the eruption, in 1985, of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia, which melted the mountain’s glaciers, causing mudflows to race down the volcano’s side and engulf the town of Armero, where more than 20,000 people died.





The earliest known sketch of a volcano dates back to the 15th Century, from the German manuscript of The Voyage of Saint Brendan (Credit: Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford)

Of course, it isn’t only volcanologists who are concerned with large eruptions. Volcanoes, an ongoing exhibition organised by Pyle at Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries, reminds us that devastating eruptions – Vesuvius in AD 79, Tambora in 1815, Krakatoa in 1883 – have often fascinated humans, filling them with awe and dread. For millennia, artists and writers, as well as scientists, have felt compelled to depict and describe volcanoes.

To read more, please visit: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20170316-why-the-awesome-power-of-the-volcano-fascinates-us