[2][3] It destroyed the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri, as well as communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and the coast of Crete with subsequent earthquakes and paleotsunamis.

[6][7][8] Since tephra from the Minoan eruption serves as a marker horizon in nearly all archaeological sites in the Eastern Mediterranean,[9] its precise date is of high importance and has been fiercely debated among archaeologists and volcanologists for decades,[10][11] without coming to a definite conclusion.

In a repeating process, the volcano would violently erupt, then eventually collapse into a roughly circular seawater-filled caldera, with numerous small islands forming the circle.

[15][16] According to the latest analysis of marine sediments and seismic data gathered during ocean research expeditions from 2015 to 2019, the estimated volume of the material expelled during the volcanic eruption ranges from 28–41 km3 (6.7–9.8 cu mi) DRE.

[6][7] On Santorini, there is a 60 m (200 ft) thick layer of white tephra that overlies the soil clearly delineating the ground level before the eruption.

Since no human remains have been found at the Akrotiri site, this preliminary volcanic activity probably caused the island's population to flee.

[18][19][20] Intense magmatic activity of the first major phase (BO1/Minoan A)[21] of the eruption deposited up to 7 m (23 ft) of pumice and ash, with a minor lithic component, southeast and east.

After the eruption, the geomorphology of the island was characterized by an intense erosional phase during which the pumice was progressively removed from the higher altitudes to the lower ones.

In addition, the magma underlying the volcano came into contact with the shallow marine embayment, resulting in violent phreatomagmatic blasts.

Ash layers in cores drilled from the seabed and from lakes in Turkey show that the heaviest ashfall was towards the east and northeast of Santorini.

It provides a fixed point for aligning the entire chronology of the second millennium BCE in the Aegean, as evidence of the eruption is found throughout the region.

Yet, archaeological dating based on typological sequencing and the Egyptian chronology is significantly younger than the radiocarbon age of the Minoan eruption, by roughly a century.

[28] Archaeologists developed the Late Bronze Age chronologies of eastern Mediterranean cultures by analyzing design styles of artifacts found in each archaeological layer.

The date of the production of pottery with the Santorini milk bowl style in other regions has not been determined and could pre-date the Minoan eruption.

[44] Early radiocarbon dates in the 1970s with calibration were already showing massive age disagreement and were initially discarded as unreliable by the archaeological community.

[39] In the following decades, the range of possible eruption dates narrowed significantly with improved calibration, analytical precision, statistical methods, and sample treatment.

[59] In 2020, speculation of regional offset specific to Mediterranean context in all calibration curves was reported based on measurements made on juniper wood at Gordion.

An eruption of Theran magnitude is expected to leave a detectable signal in various environmental records like ice core and tree ring.

The higher end of the estimate could cause severe climatic change and leave detectable signals in ice cores and tree rings.

In 1987, a major Greenland sulfate spike in 1644 ± 20 BCE in ice core chronology was hypothesized to be caused by the Minoan eruption based on the early radiocarbon results of Hammer et al.[45] In 1988, a major environmental disruption and extreme global-cooling/frost-ring in 1627 ± 0 BCE were also revealed through precisely dated frost ring and too were hypothesized to be related to Minoan eruption.

[87][88][89] Many affected sites were rebuilt, including Petras and Palaikastro, at the latter of which, new buildings were constructed using high quality ashlar masonry.

[89] In their book The Troubled Island, Driessen and MacDonald argued that the richness of the post-eruption material culture masked deep economic and political problems that eventually led to the collapse of Neopalatial society.

[92][93] A volcanic winter from an eruption in the late 17th century BCE has been claimed by some researchers to correlate with entries in later Chinese records documenting the collapse of the semi-legendary Xia dynasty in China.

[13] Apocalyptic rainstorms, which devastated much of Egypt, and were described on the Tempest Stele of Ahmose I, have been attributed to short-term climatic changes caused by the Theran eruption.

[100] Spyridon Marinatos, the discoverer of the Akrotiri archaeological site, suggested that the Minoan eruption is reflected in Plato's story of Atlantis.

[101][102][103][104][105] Geologist Barbara J. Sivertsen seeks to establish a link between the eruption of Santorini (c. 1600 BCE) and the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt in the Bible.

[20] In the controversial bicameral mentality hypothesis, Julian Jaynes has argued that the Minoan eruption was a crucial event in the development of human consciousness since the displacements that it caused led to new and important interactions among communities.