Ver Cuevana2. Nearly 3,600 years ago, the eastern Mediterranean was shaken by the eruption of the Santorini volcano, north of Crete, which destroyed several port cities and covered the entire region in a thick layer of ash. This cataclysm, long considered the trigger for the collapse of Minoan civilization, still raises many questions, which a vast international deep-sea drilling project is attempting to answer. Prepared over a period of six years, Expedition 398 brought together a team of scientists from eight countries aboard a research vessel equipped with state-of-the-art technology. Its aim: to take samples from the Santorini caldera in order to establish the age, history and dangerousness of the volcano.