The shaking earth on Santorini and the surrounding islands reminds us of the fragility of life in our beautiful and always restless country. Our governments’ difficulty in handling crises, opposition parties’ inability to present credible alternatives, even the fact that unbalanced individuals are in control of countries with nuclear weapons, all pale before the awe that we feel when the earth that we stand on, that we build on, begins to shake. Santorini’s incomparable beauty is born of the combination of human inventiveness and a landscape that is continually being shaped by inconceivable violence. The houses, hotels and public buildings – a white crown on the dark caldera’s brow – are proof of the irresistible attraction of high cliffs, the deep sea and the ever-present threat of volcanoes and rifts. The remarkable Bronze Age city discovered at Akrotiri was both destroyed and preserved by a huge volcanic eruption around 1600 BC – it blasted through the once-round island, creating the caldera and burying the settlement. The absence of dead among the ruins and various archaeological finds support the theory that the residents had been alarmed by warning quakes and managed to evacuate before the eruption.
Let’s hope that today’s seismic activity will ease off and that soon Santorini, Amorgos and the wider region will return to normality. Let’s hope, also, that the insecurity caused by living with an unpredictable threat will remind those who have forgotten (or never considered) that the people who survived on this land through the centuries were those who understood where they stood, who were aware of danger and acted sensibly – dealing with earthquakes, pirates, drought and poverty. They were inventive and daring. They cultivated the dry earth with special methods and great success. They sailed back and forth across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, returning to their poor homeland with wealth and experience. With care and respect for their land, with an instinctual and practical sense of beauty, they created settlements, vineyards, gardens and businesses, leaving a rich legacy for future generations. This happened across Greece, through wars, foreign occupation, and continual political and economic instability. In this way, they shaped and maintained places of great physical beauty and cultural significance.
In the last few years, we have seen this inheritance helping many to live more easily than their predecessors, with a natural and architectural legacy which inspires admiration across the world. We see also how easily this wealth is wasted by greed and disrespect towards the landscape and our cultural heritage. We have reached the point where some places cannot bear the weight of thoughtless exploitation of their beauty and are in danger of being unable to function as living societies. This is what happens when teachers, doctors and employees of all kinds of business cannot find a place to stay. This is what happens when overbuilding destroys the landscape. Beauty born of destruction is one thing, destroying beauty is another. Let’s hope that today’s reminder of human frailty before nature’s power will move not only those who have an institutional responsibility to protect the landscape, but all of us, too.