Hell on Earth 1258: Volcanic Eruptions, Famine and the Medieval Year Without Summer
The Babad Lombok is an 800 year old chronicle written on palm leaves by the indigenous peoples of the Indonesian island of Lombok. Today the island of Lombok is home to over three million people. Lombok’s prime tropical location makes the remote volcanic island one of Indonesia’s most popular tourist destinations. However, nearly eight centuries ago, in the year 1257, the tropical paradise of Lombok was the site of one of the most powerful and destructive volcanic eruptions in recorded history--the eruption of Mount Samalas. The Babad Lombok Scientists believe that the Samalas eruption may have registered as a 7 on the modern day Volcanic Explosivity Index, or VEI, which would make Samalas the most powerful eruption in the past 12 millenia. In an instant, sometime most probably in the autumn of 1257, ten square miles of the top of Mount Samalas literally exploded and shot as high as twenty-five miles into the sky. Ash from the 1257 eruption of the Samalas volca...