Cataclysm
The term cataclysm or Kataklysmos ( lat. Cataclysmus , Greek. Κατακλυσμός Kataklysmos to κατακλύζειν kataklýzein "flood"; κατά kata "down" κλύζειν klýzein "rinse, wash away") refers to a very large, all-destroying disaster.
Concept history
In Greek philosophy , the term appeared in connection with the theories about a world cycle lasting many millennia , also known as the Great Year . As a result, world events repeat themselves cyclically. At the turning points of the cycle marked by the reappearance of certain planetary constellations, major catastrophes occurred, namely gigantic flood events, the cataclysms, or a world fire , the ekpyrosis .
It was therefore obvious that when the Hebrew Bible was translated into the Septuagint, the “ Flood ” was translated as “Kataklysmos” ( Gen 6:17 LXX ). Accordingly, in Orthodox Christianity, the holiday that commemorates the Flood is also called Kataklysmos . It is a public holiday in Cyprus , which is celebrated 50 days after the Orthodox Easter on Whit Monday, especially in the coastal cities. The festival has a mystical reference to water; after the service, many congregations go to the sea, where the priest throws a cross in the water and young men dive for it; finding it is interpreted as a sign of luck.
Cataclysmic events also appear in other ancient literature, for example
- in Plato in connection with the description of the fall of Atlantis as well as in the Nomoi , or
- with Ovid , who reports in his Metamorphoses of two cataclysms, namely the flood, which destroys all life except Deucalion and his wife, and the fall of Phaethon , who almost burned the earth with the sun chariot (which would correspond to an ekpyrosis).
Cataclysms in Geology
Cataclysm describes a geological catastrophe, especially in geology .
The beginnings of scientific geology in the 18th and 19th centuries were shaped by the disputes between the representatives of the cataclysm theories who tried to interpret geological findings as a result of the Flood (and thus in particular wanted to save the biblical timeframe of a few millennia since the creation of the world) , and their opponents, who wanted to see much slower processes at work that would last for millions of years.
Because of these disputes, representatives of theories in geology that operated with geological catastrophes were for a long time marginalized and their scientific seriousness was denied.
Over the past few decades this bias has slowly dissipated, and cataclysmic events in Earth's history have received due attention. Such events include:
- Impacts of large celestial bodies, for example a comet , which is believed to be the cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs, see KP impact ,
- Eruptions of super volcanoes , for example the Yellowstone Caldera ,
- global ice ages , see Snowball Earth , or
- the explosion of a nearby supernova .
