A new scientific study of an ice core sample from Greenland has demonstrated how the Central-American Ilopango mega-eruption wiped out an entire Maya area, 1,590 years ago.
Millions of tons of white ash from the Ilopango mega-eruption spread across more than 770,000 square miles (200 million hectares) of Central America. The event was called the “Tierra Blanca Joven,” Spanish for “young white earth.” The eruption was so destructive that it would have darkened the entire region for at least a week. And if this weren’t enough for one Armageddon-like event, the Ilopango explosion also caused a series of climatic events that led to a “strange 18-month era of global cooling,” according to the latest paper.