Well, Part 2 on the Taupo supervolcano will not be out today, but are you up for a canoe ride?
On the assumption that most readers will be of European descent, like me (German and Irish, gawdelpus!), here is a paper on the Maori point of view — how Maori tribes and subtribal units living on nearby Ruapehu’s south flank see their situation, in terms of hazard (which Maori reject as a concept) from that volcano.
This cultural mindset is probably applicable to the Maori living around Taupo, too, although it hasn’t yet erupted on them, as Ruapehu has a number of times on its human neighbors.
That, and Mestel et al (2025a), help me better understand what artist Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell is saying in that video.
This article provides a little more information about the carvings, too.
But it is also important to know that the image is carved in a hardened pyroclastic flow: a big one, though my knowledge of Taupo stratigraphy is nil and I don’t know whether that particular flow came from the supereruption some 26,000 years ago or from that terrible seven to fifteen-minute fiery death cloud that occurred near the end of the Y eruption, late one summer or early fall afternoon, in or around 230 AD.
Out of respect for the Maori, to whom Taupo is a spiritual place, I won’t call this supervolcano a bad boy anymore, but it is a bigger, potentially much more violent entity than Ruapehu.
An image of Ngātoro-i-rangi now watches the lake, and that is good. But it is also helpful to recall that, according to scientists, a much larger lake existed here for almost a quarter of a million years, until Taupo blew it out of existence and, for the most part, back into river form:
Sound alert.
It is good to remember that no human can ever possess full understanding of the truth, just one little piece of it.
And we are all together in this, as if in a lifeboat. In such a situation, it would be good that we all try to put our individual pieces together: the resulting picture might show to us a way to more tranquil waters when the sea eventually storms again.
Featured image: QFSE Media via Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Flight To Wonder 