Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, No. 727, December 1, 1877

Historical records furnish more positive teaching, as the bay certainly existed fifteen hundred years B.C. It was at this epoch that the islands of the Greek Archipelago were invaded by the Phœnicians. This nation occupied Therasia and Santorini, as the many ruins still to be found testify, and they are built on the top of the pumice-stone. But the great eruption must have been long before that, since thick beds of pebbles and shells, from fifteen to twenty yards deep, lie on the tufa; and geologists know well, from the habitual slowness of this raising of the soil, that it corresponds to many centuries. There was also a population on the islands differing from those who were buried in the ashes, and from the Phœnicians. The latter knew the use of bronze, and introduced it on all the shores of the Mediterranean. Most likely we may place the great event during the early days of Egyptian civilisation, which some historians compute to be four or five thousand years ago. The primitive population present no trace of the influence which that nation exerted, and with which commerce would have placed them in frequent relations.