Comment on “A synchronized dating of three Greenland ice cores throughout the Holocene” by B. M. Vinther et al. No Minoan tephra in the 1642 B.C. layer of the GRIP ice core

There has been much debate in recent years among archaeologists and Earth scientists about the date of the Minoan eruption of Santorini (Thera). This debate has centered upon archaeological finds, radiocarbon dating and proxy sources including dendrochronology and acid spikes in the Greenlandic ice cores. Defining the exact date of the Minoan eruption is vital in synchronizing differing chronologies for civilizations around the Mediterranean, where many 2nd millennium B.C. cultures record this cataclysmic event. Current studies of these records have led to suggested dates for the eruption between about 1650 and 1500 B.C., and reconciling these differing dates is clearly vital in archaeology (see Friedrich [2000], Manning [1999] (see further information at http://www.informath.org/ BiOr04i.pdf), Manning et al. [2006] and Bietak and Czerny [2007] for further discussion).