The Minoan eruption was a major catastrophic volcanic eruption that devastated the Aegean island of Thera (now called Santorini) in around 1600 BCE. It destroyed the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri, as well as communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and the coast of Crete with subsequent earthquakes and tsunamis. With a VEI magnitude between 6 and 7, resulting in an ejection of approximately of dense-rock equivalent (DRE), the eruption was one of the largest volcanic events on Earth in human history.