The history of the Mayan civilisation still attracts many controversial conspiracy theories that draw in millions of enthusiasts.
Researchers from an international team of scientists along with Dario Pedrazzi, a researcher at Geosciences Barcelona–CSIC (GEO3BCN) and Victoria Smith, associate professor from the University of Oxford and head of the Tephrochronology group, have reportedly pinned down the date a devastating volcano erupted, killing every living being within a 40-km radius. The event purportedly occurred 1,590 years ago in 431 AD.
According to the common theory, the Ilopango volcano in what is now El Salvador suffered a huge eruption during the early classical Mayan era, the period between 300 and 600 AD. However, more accurate data about the nature of the eruption was only discovered during recent research.
To evaluate the date accurately, the scientists used 3D modelling to study the eruption plume that rose 28 miles into the upper atmosphere and studied an ice core from Greenland and implemented radiocarbon measurements from a charred tree found in the TBJ ash deposits.
The planetarium of the landscape park Miniwelt
With more than 770,000 square miles of Central America covered in white ash, the eruption earned the name “Tierra Blanca Joven”, Spanish for “young white earth”. The volume of its pyroclastic flows was ten times that of Mt. Vesuvius when it buried Pompeii and could have reached 1,830 °F.
The Ilopango Caldera is a part of the El Salvador volcanic arc that includes a total of 21 active volcanoes, being one of the most active segments of the Central America Volcanic Arc, and situated less than 10 km from the city of San Salvador.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
