You can write the biography of a volcano? Of a volcano such as Vesuvius? It seems so. He has written a scholar and expert English-born, former academic at the University of Dundee. Obviously our Vesuvius is a volcano that does not need to be known and even less biographer. Over the past two millennia, there have been countless studies and scholars who have dealt with him. Just as there are sudden awakenings and catastrophic that the same "Vesuvius" was.
Alwyn Scarth wrote this biography which is a real book text for its rich history of eruptions all derived from historical accounts. His research is largely devoted to the eruption of 1631 that took place after a period of "sleep" rather than along the volcano. In mid-December to the end of the year it all began with a series of pyroclastic lava, as was also the case with Pompeii. Reactions very dangerous volcanic eruptions with spectacular hot gas, toxic clouds and jets high in suspension carried by winds over long distances, depending on the direction of the winds. Ash, lapilli, sand the surface traveling throughout the valley, while at ground level advancing lava destroying everything along the route. This
eruption, according to the author, seems to make the backdrop and the backdrop for what was the movement of the Counter Reformation. The inhabitants of the area, especially the Neapolitans, in an attempt to save themselves and to exorcise the lethal effects of the eruptions, and made religious ritual practices against the cataclysm that struck them because of their sins. The relics of the saints, especially those of San Gennaro, patron of the city, were taken everywhere in the hope of appeasing the anger of volcanic activity. Thousands of barefoot penitents followed all the relics and found a way to repent of sins in the light of divine punishment. Very little is made to save and help the victims or survivors. There were thousands of deaths over the devastation property and livestock.
After a little more than a century, in 1760, Vesuvius awoke, and was once again a big English to deal with scrupulous care. It 's the representative of His Majesty the court of Naples, Sir William Hamilton, who, from his house in Portsmouth, at the foot of the volcano, has the chance to see the monster. The scale several times and studied for about forty years. Writes accurate reports to the Royal Society of London, acts as a guide to its visitors, is known to the world the charm of the mysterious volcano that wins the minds of romantic writers and poets from all over Europe. His famous description of which is dated October 1767.
In the nineteenth century the approach to the volcano changed with the introduction of earth sciences. Alexander von Humboldt and Charles Lyell are only two of the names that count studies in the field. In the middle of the century creates a specially established Centre for the Study of Vesuvius with high precision instruments can feel the shock but at least from the deep belly of Vesuvius.
At a distance of 150 years since its foundation, Scarth writes, one would expect that the warning given by the minimum of this modern equipment sofisicate did Observatory also followed a safe and calls for evacuation of the population might be affected to the dangers of the eruption. Alas not so. In only a couple of weeks of notice of a possible impending eruption, and certainly nothing concrete has been planned in terms of avacuazione and safety. The volcano is sleeping and you wake up in 1944, with a power similar to that of 1631, no one knows exactly what will happen. The most common question is: when? No scientist can say with no instrumentation. And for this reason, the people, the millions who have decided to continue to live and work around the volcano are people from a anthropological point of view are very special.
Scarth's book as well as a great historical and scientific document is also an important study on the reality of a region, Campania that old, rich and fertile populated by people and special populations. Nations and peoples upon which to some extent the hyperactivity of the volcano has definitely affected their destinies. This region, with the extraordinary city that is Naples, more than three thousand years, lives in a "volcanic" his earthly life had absorbed all the rage, passion, heat, impetuosity el'incongruenza, the fury and passion , violence and freedom of the anthropomorphic qualities of the volcano itself. Vesuvius was a courtier as dangerous, capricious and spoiled who during the eruptions and the destruction that has sent thousands to the other world of people without a reason, a reason or explanation. He sowed death and destruction, but also allowed the formation of a land very rich, fertile, noble in nature and spirit of men and things. The "Campania Felix" has seen alternating "golden age" and periods of great decadence and confusion. Last but not least, for example, the great crisis of a city and a territory prisoner of his own junk. Slag human and moral fabric of society in constant conflict with itself and with the world. This book him a good picture of our political, moral, social, historical and geographical seen through the eyes and mind of a foreigner. Article taken from Super News.
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