Of Love and Lava: A Geomythological Tale of Kilauea

The first colonists arrived on Hawai´i probably in the years 800-1.000. Lacking a written history their nevertheless developed a rich oral tradition, inspired in part by past events. 

One of the most important stories involves the volcano goddess Pele and her youngest sister Hi‘iaka. Once, so the myth, they arrived on Hawai´i and after a long search Pele decided to settle on the summit of Kilauea, since then also named Kalua o Pele, the pit of Pele. She send her youngest sister  Hi‘iaka‘aikapoliopele (generally shortened to Hi‘iaka) to search for Lohi‘au, a man Pele loved. The sister promised to bring him back to her and Pele promised as reward to her sister to spare the beloved forest of Hi‘iaka from fire and lava. Hi‘iaka had to overcome many obstacles, but finally she managed to bring Lohi‘au back to  Kilauea. However Pele had grown tired in the meanwhile and in a moment of anger she burned the entire forest.  Hi‘iaka for revenge take Lohi‘au and Pele, seeing the two together, became so envious that she killed Lohi‘au during a furious eruption. Hi‘iaka desperately searched for many weeks the corpse of Lohi‘au between the lava and rocks send by Pele.

 

Fig.1. On the rim of Pele´s pit, painting by P. Hurd, 1824.

It maybe is possible to interpret this myth in a geomythological way, linking it with features really found in the landscape and the geological history behind the formation of such features. The caldera of Kilauea is dated to 1470-1500 and also the Aila‘au flow (named after another Hawaiian deity), a large lava flow covering the north side of Kilauea, formed around 1470. Morphology and a well developed network of lava tubes suggest it formed during a single, prolonged volcanic eruption of Kilauea. The historic date makes it seems reasonable to assume that the event was watched by the locals and possibly the event was recorded and passed from generation to generation in form of a myth. The destruction of Hi‘iaka´s forest by the furious Pele could describe the lava burning down the vegetation around the crater, suggesting also that before this eruption enough time passed from the previous eruption to grow a dense forest. Also the last part of the myth is interesting.  Hi‘iaka moves and throws rocks into air during her search, maybe the description of an explosive eruption or explosions resulting from the lava coming into contact with groundwater or the sea.


 
The interpretation of myths in geological light helps also to better evaluate the risk, as eruption style of former volcanic events and the impact on the society can be reconstructed in more detail than just from studying the volcanic deposits.

Interested in reading more? Try: 

SWANSON. D.A. (2008): Hawaiian oral tradition describes 400 years of volcanic activity at Kilauea. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 176: 427–431

The Toadstone

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous, 
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."
"As You Like It" Act 2, Scene 1 by William Shakespeare (1623)

Fig.1. Bufonite as depicted in Ulisse Aldrovandi's "Musaeum Metallicum" (1648). This Bufonite seems to be some sort of concretion or possibly a Bezoar-stone.

The Bufonite / Botrax / Borax / Batrachite / Chelonite / Brontias / dragonstone or Lapis Bufonis / toadstone is a particular form of gemstone that grows in the brains of toads, most often after various toads jumped on the head of the king of the toads. Two kinds of stones exist, one is white, the other black - they differ significantly in their magic properties.
The stone must be recovered by putting the toad on a red blanket or by exposing the animal to heat - it will then regurgitate the stone, now you must quickly take it or otherwise the animal will swallow it again. Ants can also skeletonise a dead toad and expose the stone.

Fig.2. A 1497 illustration by the German botanist and physician Johannes de Cuba, depicting the extraction and use of a toadstone.

The stone protects from magic and misfortune, has healing powers for all sorts of wounds and interior pains. In the vicinity of poison its change its colour and starts to transpire a liquid.

Despite the vague descriptions that exist for this magic gemstone, "toadstones" were identified with the fossilized teeth of Lepidotus - an extinct genus of ray-finned fish from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods - probably due the supposed similarities of the fossil teeth to the eyes of the toad.

Fig.3. Another kind of Bufonite as depicted in Ulisse Aldrovandi's "Musaeum Metallicum" (1648), these are clearly the fossil teeth of the fish Lepidotus.

October 23, 4004: The Creation of the World

October 23, has become famous by (non)geologists as earth's birthday - largely due the brief mention in textbooks of the Irish Archbishop James Ussher's (1581-1656) work published in 1650 as the "Annales veteris testamenti, a prima mundi origine deducti" (Annals of the Old Testament, deduced from the earliest beginning of the world). Ussher presents a possible chronology of the 6.000 years old history of earth and humankind based on references in the bible and research of others scholars of the time (most influential was John Lightfoot - 1602-1675 - who published his calculations in 1644). 
For Ussher and other scholars it was important to know the age of the earth to possibly infer the time of the rapture. As for god a day is like thousand days and he needed 6 days to create the universe, the world would was created 4.000 years before Christ and last for 2.000 years after.
The exact date given by the Ussher-Lightfoot-Chronology - October 23*, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning - has become ridiculed by scientists as the futile attempt to determinate natural facts only based on the interpretation of Bronze Age myths [* or 6 p.m. October 22, 4004 B.C. according to the Jewish calendar].

However considering the time and the purpose of the work, Ussher's attempts were not too farfetched - his conclusions were based on the information that was available at the time and served well the theological questions that they should help clarify.

Also this age was not universally and uncritically accepted- there were many earlier attempts to determinate the age of the earth and many concluded that earth was significantly older than known human history. Also during and shortly after Ussher there were serious doubts on the veracity of the 6.000 years time interval, manly due the observation in nature and outcrops.
For example in the book "A Tour through Sicily and Malta" the stratigraphic research by the Sicilian Canon Giuseppe Recupero (1720-1778) on the slopes of Mount Etna is mentioned. Recupero discovered a succession of seven lava flows, he dated the youngest to the second Punic War (218 to 201 B.C.) and therefore the oldest could be 7x2.000 years =14.000 years old.

Finally on March 17, 1785 a man will propose a new modern approach - "we find no vestige of a beginning, no prospect of an end."

Fig.1. llustration from Thomas Burnet´s book "The Sacred Theory of the Earth", published in 1684.

The Thunderstone of Ensisheim

"It was nothing of this earth, but a piece of the great outside; and as such dowered with outside properties and obedient to outside laws."

"The Colour Out of Space", by H.P. Lovecraft (1927)

It was 11.30 a.m. of the 7, November 1492 that in the sky a “gruesome thunderbolt and long lasting roar” was heard and a rock impacted in a wheat field producing a crater “half a man length” deep.
Soon curious onlookers gathered around the hole, and with the help of some strong men and an oxcart the recuperated 127 kilogram heavy stone felt from the sky was carried with a solemn procession in the nearby city of Ensisheim, however not after some pieces of the rock were broken off as memorabilia.

Fig.1. One of the most popular depictions of the impact of the thunderstone of Ensisheim in a contemporary pamphlet by the Swiss humanist Johann Bergmann von Olpe from Basel.
The accompanying text explains as follows:
“In the year thousand four hundred ninety two was heard a great clamour
That first outside the city in the seventh month of wintertime
A great rock at bright day felt down with thunderbolt
With a weight of three and a half centner and with the colour of iron it was brought here in a solemn procession, with great strength many pieces were broken off”

The Austrian emperor Maximilian I., accidentally in the town for political reasons, also took two pieces for his collection and ordered that the remaining mysterious rock should be exposed in the local church. This seemed necessary, stones falling from the sky were believed to be dangerous premonitory signs of war, plague and famine and the product of evil forces - only by putting the rock in chains on holy ground their evil influence could be neutralized.

The shooting star became soon known as the “thunderstone of Ensisheim”, the news of its recovery was propagated by pamphlets all over Central Europe and scholars speculated about the significance of the strange rock.
In the first pamphlet the Swiss humanist Johann Bergmann von Olpe remembered of various signs in the sky and wonders observed in the last years, more remarkable than every thing that could be read in books, but this rock was by far the greatest of all miracles. He continues to tell the extraordinary effects of the phenomena, the thunderbolt produced by the rock alone was heard all over Europe, or at least until the nearby Swiss.
Bergmann is sure that the stone is a sign for misfortune for all the enemies of the rightfully emperor Maximilian, god himself send it to declare his support for a war against France – another example of misuse of catastrophes for political reasons.

Fig.2. The impact as seen in the “Schweizer Bilderchronik des Luzerners“ by Diebold Schilling in 1512.

The “thunderstone of Ensisheim” is today the oldest known recorded case of a meteorite in Europe.
For the next centuries the case of Ensisheim will appear in various chronicles and report, but the origin of these rocks remains mysterious until the 18th century.
Two main explanations will develop - meteorites are solidified air or vapour and so phenomena of the atmosphere or in alternative eruption products of volcanoes and so phenomena of the geosphere.
An extraterrestrial origin was considered impossible because the space between the planets was considered free of matter, idea supported and promoted by the English astronomer Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727).

An important contribution comes from the German physician and lawyer Ernst Friedrich Chladni (1756-1827), he collects eyewitness reports and petrologic and chemical analyses and in 1794 publish his work entitled “Über den Ursprung der von Pallas gefundenen und anderer ihr ähnlicher Eisenmassen, und über einige damit in Verbindung stehende Naturerscheinungen” (About the origin of the by Pallas discovered and other similar masses of iron and their connected natural apparitions). He is the first to publish and carefully document the hypothesis that meteorites are not rocks from or formed on earth, but remnants of the formation of the solar system coming from the interplanetary space.

Bibliography:

BÜHLER, R.W. (1992): Meteorite – Urmaterie aus dem interplanetaren Raum. Weltbild Verlag:, Augsburg: 192

Online resources:

e-meteorite (31.10.2001): Geschichte der Meteoritenkunde. (Accessed 29.03.2011)
GROSSMAN, M. (2010-2011): Meteorite Manuscripts. (Accessed 29.03.2011)

Gods, stars, the moon and other dangerous pseudoscience

The Greeks imagined volcanoes as a sort of supernatural prison, to punish disobedience or crimes against the gods, the Roman poet Virgil reports that buried under Mount Etna lies the giant Enceladus, and under Mount Vesuvius his brother Mimas.
If any of these volcanos trembled, we could feel the agony, if it rumbled, we could hear their desperation and when it erupted we could observe their blood. The perpetual active island of Vulcano became the forge of the gods, supervised (not completely voluntarily) by the blacksmith Hephaestus.
Earthquakes and flood waves were caused by the god of the sea, mighty Poseidon, to punish the mortals.

Early Christianity often adopted these old believes, natural catastrophes, especially floods and earthquakes, were the wraith of god to punish believers or destroy nonbelievers. The active volcano transformed from a forge to the doorway to hell - inclusive lava thought to be the visible effects of hell-fire. During medieval times religious explanations prevailed, even if some scholars in later times tried to explain geological phenomena as natural events, like the French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650), who imagined earth composed of three layers - fire, water, earth-, sometimes erupting one into the other. However it was god himself that had created earth and volcanoes or earthquakes in such a way.

From this aspect of geological catastrophes predetermined by god(s) results also the influence attributed to stars, and especially comets onto earthquakes. Astrology is older than many modern deities, and it was incorporated into the new monotheistic religions like Islam and Christianity, by studying the sky it seemed possible to foresee fate, recognize the future and understand the plans of the god.

Comets were unusual marks onto the celestial sphere - suddenly appearing and apparently following no rule, they were frightening and bad omen of plagues, war and earthquakes.
A hand-coloured woodcut and accompanying text by the German Hermann Gall explains this supposed connection between an earthquake in the citiy of Rossana and later in Constantinople (modern Istanbul) on May 10. 1556 and a comet visible some months before.
In the sky above the city, with a heavily damaged Hagia Sophia Temple in the centre and other collapsed buildings and people trying to escape, a comet is depicted as seen in the period from March 5 to March 17, on May 13. suddenly a bright star appeared near the moon. According to the author, who claims he was eyewitness of these celestial phenomena, such signs of wonder were a certain omen of the imminent end of the world.

Fig.1. "Frightening signs of wonder before the terrible earthquake which happened in the cities of Rossanna and Constantinople", hand colored woodcut by the German Hermann Gall displaying the 1566 Constantinople earthquake (from KOZAK & CERMAK 2010).

One of the first scholars to separate superstition and god from geology was the German Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) naturalist but ironically also Jesuit. In 1638 he studied the active Mount Vesuvius by venturing into the crater. In his published work "Mundus Subterraneus" (1678) he adopted a complete secular explanation, explanation still rejected by the official church. Even in 1755 the Jesuit Malagrida claimed that the destructive earthquake of Lisbon was a result of the anger of god, ignoring the first naturalistic explanations existing at the time. The earthquake of Lisbon however marks the beginning the epoch of the enlightenment, this time scientific explanations will prevail over old superstitions.

Unfortunately dragons are hard to kill: The earthquake in Japan has generated again the reaction of religious fundamentalists, still today believers struggle to explain the contradicting behaviour of supposed higher beings - most concerning are the quotes of religious fanatics or politicians like for example the Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, the American Glenn Beck or Roberto De Mattei, vice-president of the Italian National Research Council (!), in his religious broadcast "radici cristiane (Christian roots)" on the radio station "Radio Maria" 20. March 2011.
As for divine intervention here a scene of the Australian film "Bad Boy Bubby" (1993) summarizing why it would be a good idea to dismiss god(s):



Not only religion(s), today also pseudoscience tries to misuse catastrophes for its purpose - as for example the obsolete superstition called astrology tries to misuse the sorrows and fears of people to gain support and earn money.

Here some examples of debunked fairy tales perpetuated by various astrologists, especially the claim that the constellation of stars (remember the comets) and the position of the moon triggered the earthquake in Japan:

On earthquakes, eruptions and the Moon

Are there more earthquakes in our days? Is the end of the world here?

SuperMoon

Bibliography:

KOZAK, J. & CERMAK, V. (2010): The Illustrated History of Natural Disasters. Springer-Verlag: 203

Following the tracks of Ichnology

Ichnology is considered a relatively young branch of the earth sciences, although like common fossils the marks left by organisms (especially vertebrate footprints) were noted already in antiquity. So its seems that the nature of fossil tracks was recognized relatively early in human history, many old legends see in those signs impressed in the rocks the footprints of animals, even if the systematic attribution is incorrect, claiming that these tracks were produced by giant humans, monstrous birds or other mystical creatures.

It was only at the beginning of the 19th century that the first widespread scientific inquiries begun, and only in the second half of the 20th century ichnology begun to emerge as a systematic and separate discipline.
First public interests on fossil tracks arouse between 1800 to 1830, with the discovery of large tridactyl footprints in Jurassic sediments of Connecticut, and interpreted as marks left by "Noah's Raven" or other giant birds; Noah's flood was still a popular explanation.

The first scientific work on tetrapod ichnology, about Permian tracks of Scotland, was published only in 1831 by Rev. Henry Duncan. In the following years descriptions of hand - like spurs, denominated Chirotherium, and other ichnofossils found in sandstones of the European Permian and Triassic followed.

There are however rare examples of naturalists much earlier than the 19th century, who studied fossil tracks and in part interpreted it correctly. The "Rinascimento" (Renaissance) was a cultural movement, born in Italy it influenced profoundly the 14th to the 17th century, dedicated to empirical knowledge and developing theories based on observations.
The widespread outcropping, easily accessible Mesozoic and Cainozoic sediments of the Italian peninsula played an important role for the advancement of geology and the interpretation of fossils and ichnofossils.

The cretaceous "Marne a Fucoidi (Fucoid - marls)" are known for their abundance of the Fucoides, dark, branched sign in marls, described in 1823 by the French geologist Adolphe Brongniart based on Italian material and considered the remains of algae - only in 1881 the ichnofossil character of these burrows was recognized and the modern term Chondrites adopted.

Fig.1. Examples of Chondrites as can be found in the "Marne a Fucoidi", late Cretaceous marls outcropping in the Bottaccione Gorge near the city of Gubbio, Umbria.

In fact these burrows of invertebrates are so abundant in the sediments, that the marks are mentioned in historic travel guides, and the great geologists Lyell and Murchinson visited Italy to study these fossils.
Another kind of common fossil trace, found often in the Italian geological formations of Cainozoic age, is Zoophycos, described by Villa Antonio in 1844, and named formally in 1855 by the naturalist Abraham Massolongo.

Fig.2. Zoophycos found in the Trubi Formation of Zanclean age (Pliocene) at Scala dei Turchi, in the Rossello composite section (Sicily).

It's no wonder that 300 years earlier these unusual signs on rocks were noted by the first empirical naturalists.
Among these, the universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who based on recent observations of animals behaviour, speculated about fossil and geology far ahead of the common assumptions of his time. It is known that Leonardo rejected the idea that fossils (his ""nicchi", shells as he describe them) in sediments were of inorganic nature or even the evidence of a large, single flood, he recognized that the deposition of these" features" in the sediments needed much more time and occurred incessantly: a first glimpse of the process of fossilization.
Leonardo did not only study the preserved shells, but was also interested in the impressions left on the surfaces of the layers. Based on observations of the marine life found on a modern sand coast, Leonardo recognizes that the individual layers are sedimentation phases, divided by phases with no sedimentation and when the surface of the sand was colonized by animals:

"…among one and another rock layer, there are the traces of the worms that crawled in them when they were not yet dry"

Leonardo also recognized ichnofossils documenting a possible predatory behaviour:

"The trace of the course [of the moving animal] is still preserved on the shell that has been consumed in the same manner of woodboring beetles"

"There is to be seen, in the mountains of Parma and Piacenza, a multitude of shells and corals full of borings, still sticking to the rocks. When I was at work on the great horse of Milan, certain peasants came into my workshop and brought a large sackful of them to me"

Fig.3. Most references to ichnofossils by Leonardo deal with their description and interpretation - the only known possible representation of a ichnofossil by da Vinci can be found on the folio 25r of the Codex I. (written between 1504-1510). Leonardo depicted several mollusc fossils (maybe to study them for heraldic use), among them a hexagonal structure that resembles the trace fossil Paleodictyon (figure from BAUCON 2010).

However Leonardo never published or presented his observations and deductions to the public, and so his knowledge had to wait for 300 years in his secret notebooks to be rediscovered.

These were still dangerous times, the naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605), who lived shortly after Leonardo, spent his last years of life in house arrest, accused of heresy by mother church.

Aldrovandi was a son of the Renaissance: he studied law and philosophy and other arts, but got interested in zoology, botany, medicine and geology.
In one of his most important naturalistic work, the "Musaeum Metallicum" published posthumous in 1648, he describes, classifies and represents hundreds of "fossilia", a term including all things found in the underground and excavated, like rocks, soils, fossil resins, minerals and trace fossils - and some monsters and oddities.

"to understand plants and animals there is no better way than to depict them from life"

Although an advocate of personal observation, Aldrovandi still combines, like other naturalists of this transition phase, the empiric approach of later Galileo with theoretical and philosophical principles of former philosopher.
So he compares some body fossils to anatomical parts of modern animals, implying a connection, but for other fossils, displaying no superficial resemblance to living animals, he still relies to a inorganic forming force modelling the rocks.
Nevertheless the tentative comparation is a great achievement, it must be also considered that the true nature of fossils, intended as remains and tracks of ancient animals, will be accepted universally only in the late 18th century.

This ambivalent approach can be also observed in the ichnofossils: Aldrovandi refers to a rock with holes and hollows as "Silicem dactylitem", because the apparent resemblance to the borings of modern bivalves, like Pholas dactylus, a species of lithophagous bivalves found boring in the rock on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. This comparation seems intentional and Aldrovandi in fact in a later chapter describes in great detail observed modern bioerosion caused by mollusks.

Fig.4. "De Silice", pictured in Aldrovandi's (1648) Musaeum Metallicum and interpreted as borings of mollusks (=Gastrochaenolites) (figure from BAUCON 2009).

For other, as we now know, ichnofossils he simply states "that [it] resemble snake figures", obvious misinterpreting, in difference to Leonardo, the nature of this invertebrate tracks (=Cosmorhaphe).

Fig.5. View of the plate with Cosmorhaphe. This illustration is remarkably realistic, thanks to its extreme detail (for example the semicircular furros in the track) and to the use of hatching to restore three-dimensionality and volume to the subject (figure from BAUCON 2009).

Fig.6. Example of invertebrate tracks in the Triassic Gröden-Formation, South Tyrol, resembling the kind of ichnofossil depicted by Aldrovandi.

The "Stelechites" described by Aldrovandi are straight, subcylindrical structures. Aldrovandi writes:

"[I]n nature we also find a stone that resembles the trunk of a tree and shows the hardness of iron."

From the figures and the description however it is not clear what Aldrovandi is exactly referring to, maybe these fossils are fragments of invertebrate burrows (=Thalassinoides).

Fig.7. "Stelechites" Aldrovandi uses this term to indicate subcylindrical, arborescent elements. Some specimens of "Stelechites" represent trace fossils, but most are only concretions. A. "Three varieties of Stelechites" resembling fragments of a burrow. The specimens shown are currently preserved at Palazzo Poggi (Bologna). B. Another specimen of Stelechites, possibly a trace fossil (figure from BAUCON 2009).

Fig.8. Fragments of a burrow infill emerging from marls of the Trubi Formation and in the overlying Monte Narbone Formation at Punta Piccola (Sicily) - the ichnofossil fits the description given by Aldrovandi as tree-like structures, maybe the notion of the "hardness of iron" is related with the apparent resistance against erosion by the ichnofossil in comparison to the surrounding rocks.

Despite the work of Aldrovandi was published, many of the accomplishment of both Aldrovandi and Leonardo were for a long period neglected and forgotten. Only 300 years later the knowledge of these two personalities' was rediscovered, and only now we begin to appreciate what both naturalists-artists achieved.

Bibliography:

BAUCON, A. (2008): Italy, the Cradle of Ichnology: the legacy of Aldrovandi and Leonardo. Studi Trent. Sci. Nat., Acta Geol., 83: 15-29
BAUCON, A. (2009): Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522-1605): The Study of Trace Fossils During the Renaissance. Ichnos, 16: 4, 245 - 256
BAUCON, A.. (2010): Leonardo da Vinci, the founding father of Ichnology. PALAIOS 25: 361-367
LEONARDI, G. (2008): Vertebrate ichnology in Italy. Studi Trent. Sci. Nat., Acta Geol., 83 (2008): 213-221
MAYOR, A. & SARJEANT, W.A.S. (2001): The Folklore of Footprints in Stone: from Classical Antiquity to the Present. Ichnos 8(2): 143-163