Nearly 3,600 years ago, the eastern Mediterranean was shaken by the eruption of the Santorini volcano, north of Crete, which destroyed several port cities and covered the entire region in a thick layer of ash. This cataclysm, long considered the trigger for the collapse of Minoan civilization, still raises many questions, which a vast international deep-sea drilling project is attempting to answer. Prepared over a period of six years, Expedition 398 brought together a team of scientists from eight countries aboard a research vessel equipped with state-of-the-art technology. Its aim: to take samples from the Santorini caldera in order to establish the age, history and dangerousness of the volcano.

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