[UA] [Un]explained

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knowing mr.Stolze's love of strange but still mundane

Oracle's secret fault found
Ancient prophesies made at Delphi may have been inspired by natural gas.
17 July 2001
PHILIP BALL

The Temple of Apollo: hot air at fault for the oracle.
The Greeks and Romans took their prophesies from a woman who was high on the
fumes of natural gas, say US geologists1. Geological surveys of the site of
the Greek Temple of Apollo in Delphi  reveal that the temple ruins lie over
a fault cross that emits intoxicating vapours.
The oracle at Delphi made the site a major religious centre for 2,000 years.
Greek and Roman rulers flocked there, seeking advice on private and
political affairs. The oracle was originally sacred to the Earth goddess
Gea; later, a temple was dedicated to the Greek god Apollo. The oracle was
finally forbidden in AD 392 by the Christian emperor of Rome.
The Roman writer Plutarch, who, in the first century AD, served as a high
priest of the temple, left clear records of how the oracle worked. It was
spoken by a local woman - the Pythia - who entered a trance inside a small
chamber, called the adyton. These trances occasionally deepened into
delirium, even death.
In the adyton, Plutarch says, the Pythia inhaled vapours from a fissure or
spring. He describes the fumes as sweet-smelling, like perfume. Despite his
priestly role, Plutarch was canny about the origin of the gases, speculating
that they issued from the rocks below and might be affected by nearby
earthquakes.
But when the temple was excavated in the nineteenth century, archaeologists
found no fissure or vapour emissions, leading some to wonder whether the
legendary intoxicating fumes may have been inspired by other nearby
geological features.
Last year, geologist Luigi Piccardi in Florence, Italy, suggested that the
idea for the mythical chasm might have been a rupture temporarily opened up
by the massive earthquake in the Gulf of Corinth in 373 BC, which destroyed
the temple2.
Now Jelle de Boer of Wesleyan University in Connecticut, USA, and co-workers
have discovered a previously unknown geological fault passing straight
through the Sanctuary and Temple of Apollo. The fault is punctuated by
active and dried-up springs. Indeed, there was an ancient spring house in
the sanctuary right on the fault line.
The new-found fault crosses the long-known Delphi fault, apparently right
below the temple. This crossing makes the bitumen-rich limestone there more
permeable to gases and groundwater.
Seismic activity on the faults could have heated up these deposits,
releasing light hydrocarbon gases, the researchers speculate. Indeed, water
from a spring northwest of the temple contains methane, they report - and,
even more intriguingly, traces of ethylene.
Ethylene, a sweet-smelling gas, stimulates the central nervous system - it
was once used as an anaesthetic. Although fatal in large quantities, small
doses produce a floating sensation and euphoria. In other words, just what
an oracle needs to start having visions.


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