This is the second article about volcanoes. You are welcome to read the first one, which is titled Volcanoes – Hell or Blessing?

Many nations make volcanoes their national icons – best example is Japan. Images of Fuji, also known as a dormant volcano Fujiyama, are very common in Japan. The most known painter of Japan – Katsushika Hokusai – created his famous series of engravings about the country and named them “36 views of Mount Fuji”. On each engraving, one way or the other, you can see its majesty magnificent volcano Fujiyama.
Most of us are also familiar with the story of Mount Vesuvius. Its eruption, which buried whole town of Pompeii, began suddenly at nighttime. Many citizens must have died without even waking up. Their bodies, carbonized, remained in the houses, as if they were still sleeping. Those who didn’t sleep tight and awoke to the eruption are pictured in famous painting of Karl Briullov named “The Last Day of Pompeii”.
The city of Pompeii, which was buried in 24 hours under thick layer of volcanic ashes during the eruption, now revealed (up to 80% of the whole city) by archeologists. It gave us precious knowledge about life of ancient inhabitants of Mediterranean region, their crafts, hobbies, art, and everyday life. One curious fact is that in this city was found the first sign, which warned about the presence of dog in the house. Actually it wasn’t just sign, it was a pretty big mosaic of a frightening Kerberos. “Cave Canem” was engraved under the Kerberos. In Latin it means “Beware of Dog”.
Let us get back to Volcanoes. The theory that deep inside our planet located heated magma, and our firm ground is only crust a couple of kilometers thick, is hardly acceptable for ordinary person, and also was never scientifically proven.
None of the chinks drilled in an earth’s crust reached magma, and if it were really a nuclear hell raging inside our planet, where the excess heat from it would go? It is more logical to assume separate lone “pockets” of nuclear activity, which end up with volcanic eruptions. But what causes the creation of a new volcano or activation of a sleeping one? Volcano can sleep for hundreds of years, and then awake again, covering blossoming valleys with stones and ashes, and forcing the near populations to run for their lives. What a breathtaking unrevealed processes, and vast area for curiosity!
My next article in series of articles about volcanoes is titled The Might of Volcano in Numbers

Related posts:

1. Volcanoes – Hell or Blessing?
2. Rotorua – Heartland of Maori Culture