* Astronomy

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Tambora eruption

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RE: Mount Tambora

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Archaeologists Excavate a Lost Kingdom Buried Beneath Volcanic Ash

In 1980, people began to take notice when workers from a commercial logging company began dredging up pottery fragments and bones in an area near the little village of Pancasila on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia. Other locals began finding coins, brassware and charred timber in the same region, all buried beneath a thick layer of volcanic deposits. The finds were not far from the foot of the Tambora volcano, a volcano that, in April of 1815, produced the largest eruption in recorded history. In fact, so intense was the eruption, it's atmospheric effects influenced weather patterns across faraway Europe and North America. And in one evening alone, it destroyed at least one entire village kingdom near its feet.
Acting on the discovery of these finds in 2004, Volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson of the University of Rhode Island began investigating the jungle-shrouded area by using Ground Penetrating Radar. He identified a complete house buried under 2-3 metres of pyroclastic flow and surge deposits.
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The Mount Tambora volcano began a super-colossal eruption on the 10th April 1815.
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The Mount Tambora volcano began a super-colossal eruption on the 10th April 1815.
The 1815 eruption is rated 7 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, the only such eruption since the Lake Taupo eruption in about 180 AD. With an estimated ejecta volume of 160 cubic kilometres, Tambora's 1815 outburst was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history
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Indonesia Volcanoes Under Tight Monitoring

Three Indonesian active volcanoes Tambora, Pusuk Buhit and Krakatau are under close monitoring by Centre of Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation. Surono, the Centre's chief, said
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A newly detected 19th-century volcanic eruption may solve the mystery of a strangely cool decade in the early 1800s, researchers say - but the location of the volcano itself remains a puzzle.
Scientists have long blamed the 1815 eruption of an Indonesian volcano, Tambora, for a worldwide cold snap the following year - the so-called year without a summer.
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The biggest volcanic eruption ever recorded in human history took place nearly 200 years ago on Sumbawa, an island in the middle of the Indonesian archipelago.
The volcano is called Tambora, and according to University of Rhode Island volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson, the eruption is one of the most overlooked in recorded history.
Tambora's explosion was 10 times bigger than Krakatoa and more than 100 times bigger than Vesuvius or Mount St. Helens. Approximately 100,000 died in its shadow.

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Mount Tambora (or Tomboro) is an active stratovolcano on Sumbawa island, Indonesia. Sumbawa is flanked both to the north and south by oceanic crust, and Tambora was formed by the active subduction zones beneath it. This raised Mount Tambora as high as 4,300 m, making it one of the tallest peaks in the Indonesian archipelago, and drained off a large magma chamber inside the mountain. It took centuries to refill the magma chamber, its volcanic activity reaching its peak in April 1815.

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An expedition to the site of one of the largest volcanic eruption in modern times has uncovered a lost kingdom.

More than 100,000 people died when Mount Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa in 1815.
Remains of a house with two occupants buried under ash have been unearthed for the first time in a discovery hailed the "Pompeii of the East".
Scientists say bronze bowls, ceramic pots and other recovered artefacts shed light on an ancient Indonesian culture.

"There's potential that Tambora could be the Pompeii of the East, and it could be of great cultural interest. All the people, their houses and culture are still encapsulated there as they were in 1815. It's important that we keep that capsule intact and open it very carefully" - Professor Haraldur Sigurdsson, of the University of Rhode Island, US, who has been researching the area for 20 years.

The lost village was discovered by Sigurdsson and colleagues from the University of North Carolina and the Indonesian Directorate of Volcanology during a six-week archaeological dig in the summer of 2004.
They explored a gully in the jungle cutting through a deep deposit of volcanic rock and ash where a guide said local people had discovered ancient objects.
The first evidence of the village - pottery shards, carbonised wood and fragments of bone - were soon found. Using radar to look underground, they were able to find a house buried beneath 3 metres of ash and excavate it.

"That house was totally carbonised. But inside there were two bodies, burnt or carbonised as well, and all their belongings. The rest of the town is still down there." - Professor Haraldur Sigurdsson.

Objects discovered so far, particularly the bronze objects, suggest the Tamborans were wealthy people with links to Vietnam and Cambodia.
Their language was probably related to that of the Mon-Khmer group of languages that are now scattered across Southeast Asia.
The professor intends to return to the village next year to look for a large wooden palace that he believes is buried there.

Position of the village
Position 8°15′S, 118°0′E

Mount Tambora is a stratovolcano on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa.
Records suggest that the eruption of Mount Tambora was one of the most violent in human history.
The explosion took place in on April 10 1815, affecting a huge area, including the Maluku islands, Java, and parts of Bali and Lombok.
By most accounts, and the eruption lasted from April 10 to April 15. The explosion, of Volcanic Explosivity Index 6-7 released roughly 4 times the energy of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa and it ejected an estimated 100 cubic km of pyroclastic trachyandesite, weighing approximately 2-3 × 1014 kg. This left a caldera 7km across. Before the explosion, Mount Tambora was approximately 4200 metres high; after the explosion, it was only 2851metres high.

Some 10,000 local people were killed by flows of hot gas, ash and rock. As many as 117,000 died in total as disease epidemics and starvation due to crop failures contributed to the death toll.
The year 1816 became known as "the Year Without a Summer" because of the global cooling that followed the eruption due to the release of huge amounts of volcanic ash into the atmosphere.

Tambora was not the most violent volcanic eruption of all time. The eruption of Santorini (Thira) in Greece in about 1650 BC was greater, but no accounts of the explosion survive.

Source BBC