• ARAMIDE MORONFOYE •
When I was a little kid, my grandma told me stories about agama lizards, why they bob their head but can’t speak and about the tortoise, ijapa, and why its shell looks like many pieces stitched into a whole. (The agama lizard was tricked into drinking boiling water, losing its voice forever, and the tortoise fell from heaven.)
I never believed these tales to be fact, exactly. But in retrospect, I appreciate them as the excellent means of inter-generational bonding they were. I was always drawn in by the mischievous creatures who made human-like mistakes and coloured my world into something a little more whimsical.
These stories my grandma told me are folktales and are closely related to myths, in that both narratives seek to explain the why and the how of things. Myths, however, have a core of something often considered sacred running through them, something that goes beyond mere superstition.
The geomyth is one subset of myth, and its nature, relationship with certain natural disasters, and impact on sustainable development will be the subjects of this post.
Before we go there, though, let’s explore the concept of “myth” in a little more detail.
What’s a Myth?
I’ll begin with an example.
Amongst the Fon people of West Africa, there’s a legend about how the world came to be1.
Mawu, Mother-Creator, created everything, transported on the back of a rainbow serpent called Aido Hwedo. The earth was created first, its slopes and winding curves shaped by the sinuous motions Aido Hwedo made, and its mountains formed from Aido Hwedo’s excrement wherever they stopped to rest.
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When they were done, they found that their creations – human and non-human animals, vegetation, mountains – had made the world too heavy, so Mawu asked the rainbow serpent to coil himself around the Earth and rest underneath to support the Earth’s weight and keep it steady.
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Aido Hwedo still encircles the earth today, holding his tail in his mouth and surrounded by the seas, which Mawu created to keep him cool. Whenever Aido Hwedo shifts around a little to get comfortable, there is a tidal wave. One day, it is said, Aido Hwedo will swallow his tail and the entire world will fall into the sea.
This myth of Mawu and Aido Hwedo emerged from an etiological oral tradition. Etiological oral traditions are the word-of-mouth transfers of mythical accounts, which outline the origin of everything from sunsets to suffering to the formation of the planet itself.
A myth is traditional, often with supernatural, ritual and sacred elements, and can be etiological, that is: seeking to explain the source of some phenomenon, as is seen in the story of Mawu. It can also be historical, that is: a means to recount an important event in a civilisation’s history.
The importance of myths in the understanding of the human psyche is well acknowledged and myths have been studied in a broad range of modern disciplines including art history, theology and psychology.
Just to set the scene some more, I’ll share another rather adorable example of a myth also from West Africa (country unknown):
The Earth is a flat disk held up at one end by a humongous mountain and at the other end by a giant. The giant’s wife holds up the sky. Earthquakes happen whenever the giant leaves his post to give his wife a hug.
First, +3 points to the flat-earthers, am I right? Next, in the vast and colourful world of mythology, this little story about earthquakes and giants fits into the subset of myth known as the geomyth.
Geomyths, also known as “legends of the earth” or “myths of observation”, are oral traditions created to either provide accounts of or to explain disastrous geomorphological events witnessed long ago. Examples include earthquakes, floods and volcanic eruptions. Alternatively, geomyths could also seek to explain unusual geological features, such as huge mountains, fossils, or natural phenomena, like lightning. From this brief description, we see that geomyths are sometimes historical, but are always etiological.
Why are humans all about myth?
In his book The Book of Why, computer scientist, Judea Pearl, discusses how the ability to “imagine non-existent things” and to attribute a cause that one could not see to an effect that one was witnessing may have served as a crucial point in human evolution, one that allowed us to communicate better and to plan against danger9. It follows that myth embodies this attribution of cause to effect, an extension of a very human desire to feel a sense of control.
This article by mythologist Robert A. Segal notes that a myth always comes about to fulfil a need that arrives before it. For example, there might be a desperation to explain some aspect of the world, such as death, or a need to reinforce social hierarchies, or a need to justify social institutions2. Depending on the time period, a myth might be the only way to fulfil these needs until science (hopefully) comes along and does a better job. Segal also points out that as long as the need persists, and myth continues to address it “as well as any competitor”, so will the myth persist. This seems pretty intuitive.
What then is the ‘need’ that geomyths exist to fulfil?
In pre-scientific cultures, a sort of stability in climate and landscape were expected. When, occasionally, reality did not meet these expectations, there was need for explanation2. Additionally, rocks were important in the construction of weapons and jewellery, and water was (and is) the ultimate source of life; therefore a need to explain the origin and the evolution of these things, which were so crucial for survival, would have felt necessary. The need to designate an origin of these variations in landscape created geomyths.
Basically, we’re like microscopic dust mites on the face of a sleeping giant. We’ve travelled the broad expanse of the giant’s torso, crawled through troughs and peaks of the giants chin and are now trying to figure out what exactly a nostril means. Myths arise to fulfil the need to explain the unexpected nostril and will continue to exist as long as the nostril exists and no better explanation (such as giant biology) comes along. Of course, what constitutes a ‘better’ explanation depends on which dust mite you ask.
Geomythology
The study of geomyths is geomythology, both terms coined by the geologist, Dorothy Vitaliano. In a 2007 paper Geomythology: geological origins of myths and legends3, Vitaliano explored the ways by which cultures, from native America to Asia, tried to understand the world around them, using tales replete with mythological imagery and poetry. The legends discussed in the paper describe the formation of geological features like volcanic calderas, events like earthquakes and tsunamis, featuring all sorts of beings from giant catfish to powerful goddesses.
Some of these events, thanks to radiocarbon dating, we now know occurred over 7000 years ago. Vitaliano showed that when compared to scientific knowledge, these myths demonstrate evidence of a keen observation of the facts. Furthermore, she noted that the records preserved in the legends have actually been useful in scientific nomenclature, in pinpointing the timing of past volcanic eruptions and in developing theories on how several astounding geological features evolved over generations3.
Who better to let us know what happened than the people who were there, right?
It’s also interesting to note that while Vitaliano coined the term ‘geomythology’ and was the first to methodically link geological myths from various cultures to scientific theory, even back in the 1600s, modern scientists like Robert Hooke gathered geomyths to demonstrate that the earth has evolved greatly over time. Also, scholars from as early as 4th century BC employed these “legends of the earth” to unravel the origin of fossils from ancient beasts.
Present-Day Applications of Geomythology
Like the work presented in the 2007 paper, one of the most common contemporary applications of geomythology is to better understand observed geological features. Other work is being done by anthropologists and psychologists who want to figure out the psychology of how geomyths themselves come about and then last as long as they do.
In a different, fascinating vein, historian of science and classical folklorist, Adrienne Mayor has pointed out that understanding how geomyths stick around in our cultures could one day be useful to safely dispose of massively radioactive nuclear waste. The argument is that if the plan were to bury the waste and have it undisturbed for at least 10,000 years, until it is no longer dangerous, whatever ominous warnings and records that are cooked up to keep future generations away from the waste must survive – and that perhaps “geomythological traditions” could be just what we need to keep the spirit of these warnings alive.
On to African Geomythology!
So, in the past decade, an increasing number of African scholars have taken greater interest in African geomyths and in their implications across several disciplines, including but not limited to science.
One example is the South African researcher, Charles Helm, who has explored prehistoric paintings of dinosaurs in the Mokhali Cave in Lesotho, a nation in southern Africa4. The dinosaur paintings, which are some of the earliest depictions of dinosaurs in the world, happened to be located close to skeletal material and dinosaur trackways. And Helm has looked at myths that seem to be related to these paintings and fossils, myths that speak of a beast called the Kholumolomo, who bears a great resemblance to a giant reptile and whose fossils the Basotho people of Lesotho identify in legend as “dragon bones”.
In addition, African social scientists have studied myths from the Limpopo province of South Africa and southern provinces of Zimbabwe, surrounding unusual celestial events, such as meteor sightings. They’ve analysed how these events and related myths have influenced the migration, socio-politics and traditional religion of the people in this region5.
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So far, we’ve gone through some background about myth and geomythology. Next, I’ll discuss in (potentially) exciting detail, 3 African geomyths that have captured my imagination.
1. Floods and Lunar Eclipses: A Congolese Geomyth
A fascinating example of a geomyth comes from the lower Congo regions:
A long time ago, during a heated quarrel, the Sun took up a mound of mud and flung it at the moon, causing its light to dim. When the moon went dim, there was a giant flood and then, “Men put their milk stick behind them and were turned into monkeys.” Subsequently, the current race of human beings is a more “recent creation”.
Just for fun, I’m going to pick apart this myth through a scientific lens. This analysis will be based on my hypothesis that the legend above started out as an account of a total lunar eclipse. (We’ll put aside the monkeys and “milk sticks” for now.)
When the Earth in its celestial twerk™ finds its way between the Sun and the moon, the moon’s orbit haven taken it into perfect alignment with the Earth’s shadow, we get a lunar eclipse. This shadow is made up of 2 cone-shaped parts, one inside the other. The outer cone is the penumbral shadow or penumbra, where the Earth blocks only some of the Sun’s light from hitting the moon. The inner, darker cone is the umbral shadow or umbra, where the Earth blocks all of the Sun’s light rays from hitting the moon.
In astronomy there are three basic types of lunar eclipses: Penumbral Lunar Eclipse, where the moon only passes through Earth’s lighter, penumbral shadow, the Partial Lunar Eclipse, where only a segment of the Moon passes through Earth’s umbral shadow, and the Total Lunar Eclipse, where the entire moon passes through the umbral shadow. Keep in mind that lunar eclipses only occur during a full moon.
Of these three types of eclipse, it seems most likely that the Congolese flood myth is based on a total lunar eclipse, if any eclipse at all. My reasoning is this: penumbral lunar eclipses are barely visible to the naked eye, even with a telescope. Partial lunar eclipses, on the other hand, appear as though a portion of the moon has been painted in black. In contrast, (and perhaps counterintuitively), total lunar eclipses are not completely invisible to the eye. This is due to the fact that sunlight is scattered around the edges of the Earth by the Earth’s atmosphere, so we don’t get complete darkness.
Fun tidbit: during a lunar eclipse the shadow of Earth projected onto the moon has a curved edge. This constitutes juicy evidence that Earth is, in fact, spherical. –10 points from the flat-earthers!
The Colour of a Total Lunar Eclipse
At the crux of the total lunar eclipse, the moon glows a dim brown, red, blue, grey or orange, the colour varying from eclipse to eclipse. The nature of this colour depends on the composition of Earth’s atmosphere, which serves as a filter for different parts of the light spectrum, changing the colours our eyes see. Also, a clear atmosphere means a bright lunar eclipse, while an atmosphere cluttered with dust particles or volcanic ash (as is the case after large volcanic eruption), probably means a very dark eclipse.
While full lunar eclipses are often called “blood moons”, named for the deep, riveting orange-red hue the moon takes on during, there have been many instances of a full lunar eclipse taking on a deep brown, “muddy colour”. In my interpretation of this Congolese legend, the Earth’s shadow is the “mud” cast upon the moon by the Sun.
What about the huge flood in the myth?
Well, as I mentioned earlier, lunar eclipses occur only during a full moon. And important fact: floods, particularly coastal floods, are a lot more likely during a full moon. Since the Earth rests in between sun and moon during a full moon (and of course, during a lunar eclipse), the gravitational tugs of the moon and sun on the Earth cause powerful tides that can reach up to 2 feet higher than tides at other times of the month. High tides plus strong winds could very well cause a massive flood.
2. The Exploding Lakes of Cameroon
On the 26th of August,1986 a massive cloud of CO2 (carbon dioxide) gas suddenly escaped from the Lake Nyos in Cameroon, spread up to 25 km from the lake shore and suffocated 1746 humans and more than 3000 cows6. This tragedy was coming only 2 years after a similar disaster in 1984 (also in the month of August) took place at the Lake Monoun, which is about 100km from Lake Nyos. The 1984 event led to the asphyxiation of 37 people.
What exactly happened here?
The Lakes and Limnic Eruptions
A little on the geological background of these lakes, first.
Lakes Nyos and Mounoun are crater lakes: bodies of water perched in the craters of volcanoes, which may be active or inactive. These two lakes in particular are located within the grassfields of Cameroon in West Central Africa and are highly unusual in that they are continuously being infused with CO2 gas that leaks from the pockets of molten rock moving around under the lakes6. In fact, apart from these two lakes, the only one other known lake that deals with such high levels of saturated CO2 is the Lake Kivu in Congo – but we’ll get to this one later.
Geochemical studies of Lakes Nyos and Monoun in the late 1980s showed that the lakes contained an exceptionally high amount of dissolved carbon dioxide, which was increasing at an alarmingly high rate6. Because the lakes are deep, their waters don’t really mix from top to bottom and gas keeps building and building in super dense layers at depth.
As the concentration of CO2 gas in the water rises, so does its pressure. And when, at great concentrations, the pressure of the CO2 gas exceeds the pressure of the lake water at a given depth, or when something forces the deep water to mix with shallower water (an effect which can be seen as shaking a bottle of a fizzy drink and then removing the cap), CO2 gas rushes out of solution and bursts forth in a suffocating cloud. This incredibly rare phenomenon of gas escape is called a limnic eruption and is widely believed to have caused the tragedies of 1984 and 1986 in Cameroon.
A Brutal Kom Geomyth
There is a legend originating from the Kom of Cameroon about an exploding lake:
Once upon a time, in the grass fields of western Cameroon, the wandering Kom people inhabited a land that belonged to the people of Bamessi, upon the Bamessi’s invitation. After a time of living peacefully together, the leader of the Bamessi, called the Fon, began to worry about the rising numbers of Kom in his land.
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After a while, he proposed a scheme to the Kom leader (who is also called Fon), a scheme to do away with the “strong-headed and unsavourable” young men who might one day threaten their rule. The Bamessi Fon’s proposal was that each tribe would build a house. In each respective house they would trap the so-called “unsavourables” from each of their kingdoms. Then they would burn the houses down. The Kom Fon agreed to this plan and the houses were built.
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However, unknown to the Kom, the Bamessi Fon secretly had two doors built into his own house, one at the front and another at the back, while the Kom Fon built his with only one. This meant that ultimately while the houses burned, the young men of Bamessi were able to escape through the back door while only the Kom people were killed, leaving the Kom population decimated.
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When the Kom Fon realised he had been tricked, he was outraged and began to plan his revenge. He informed his sister of his plans, which went thus: he would hang himself from the ceiling, but contrary to custom, the remaining Kom were not to approach his body or to cut him down after he died. The fluids from his body would flow down and form a lake, but the Kom must not fish from this lake. Instead, on the day the Bamessi would set aside for catching fish, the remaining Kom must take their belongings and leave the land of the Bamessi and follow the track of a python, which would appear to lead the Kom to a new land.
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The Kom people followed these instructions to the letter, and on Fishing Day, when the Bamessi entered a mysterious new lake to fish, the lake suddenly “exploded”, drowning most of the Bamessi, and then sinking and disappearing, taking the Bamessi with it. Finally, the Kom followed the python trail to the place they now call home.
Okay, so picking this one apart is going to take quite a few paragraphs, but bear with me.
The above (super bloody) Kom tale is known as a migration myth, a sacred story detailing how a people came to a new land. It’s one of several that originates from tribes living in the grassfields of Cameroon. Given the theme of this article, it might have been immediately obvious to draw parallels between the ‘exploding lake’ that “swallowed” possibly hundreds of people in the legend, and the limnic eruptions of 1984 and 1986. In fact, several anthropologists, ethnographers and even geologists have made the same connections, and so lakes where limnic eruptions occur are sometimes known as exploding lakes.
Eugenia Shanklin on ‘Maleficent’ Water
Some researchers date this Kom migration myth at between 200 and 300 years old. However, the anthropologist, Eugenia Shanklin, who has extensively studied the mythology of this region, disagrees. Based on her studies of the Kom and the royal genealogy of the Fon, she argues that this legend is likely a good bit older.
For the analysis of this Kom geomyth, I’ll focus on the work done by Shanklin. In her 1989 paper, Exploding lakes and maleficent water in Grassfields legends and myth, Shanklin presented some compelling arguments in support of the theory that the Kom legend is based on pure observed fact and that it refers to limnic ‘explosions’ of the Lakes Nyos and Monoun7.
First, she pointed out that even just a few years before the limnic eruption of 1986, the area around Lake Nyos had only been very recently settled and was strangely, lightly populated. This was odd since the land around the lake was some of the most fertile in the western grassfields and implied that something else was keeping people away. Next, she discussed other myths and beliefs of the present-day in the Cameroon grassfields, which cut across various linguistic and ethnic groups and which classify water as either “good” or “bad”. Of course, as Shanklin herself pointed, these do not constitute conclusive evidence that the exploding lakes have been exploding for hundreds of years. But it is suggestive.
One of Shanklin’s more curious interpretations of the Kom geomyth is that the explosion on Fishing Day takes place during the rainy season. This was partly inferred from her discussions with actual, real-life Kom people in the region. From Shanklin’s paper:
“First, the events of the story seem to begin in the dry season, because the Bamessi Fon suggests that each group built a house and, since, heavy rains interfere with building, house-building is a dry season activity.
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Second, Kom people describe the burning of the two houses after the doors were ‘locked’ (sealed) with dried thatching grass, which is collected and dried only during the dry season.
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Third, the Kom people are told by their Fon (through his sister) that they must wait until a lake forms. According to my informants, a lake could only form in the rainy season.”
At this point I’ll highlight that the limnic eruptions of 1984 and 1986 took place in August: right in the middle of the rainy season. Granted, Shanklin’s analysis is highly speculative, and whether or not you are even a little convinced by this reading of the myth, we can probably acknowledge that it is rather captivating to be able to draw parallels between the circumstances of a natural disaster in the present day and a legend that is probably many centuries old.
But what do scientists think happened?
Following the limnic eruptions at Lakes Nyos and Monoun, geoscientists would later offer up different hypotheses to explain why these eruptions were triggered – i.e. why the CO2 gas suddenly deemed it fit to escape the water6. One of these hypotheses posits that a landslide pushed deeper, CO2-rich water upwards, where the pressure of the gas exceeded that of the water – and so, it was able to escape. Another hypothesis suggests that an earthquake could have been the culprit, generating powerful waves that forced water in the lakes to mix. And yet other hypotheses speak to the more climatic elements of drought and – you guessed it – heavy rain.
…a fascinating picture can be drawn about the life cycle of this phenomenon in the Cameroon grass fields.
Let’s talk about the influence of drought and rain, then. Periods of (meteorological) drought generally involve lower than average rainfall quantity and higher than average temperatures. These high temperatures could in theory, evaporate a good amount of water from the top of the lake, water that serves as the bottle cap on the shaken fizzy drink. This would effectively release a bunch of dissolved gases! Even further, a lake becoming shallower as a result of drought could also have its deeper, gas-filled layers now vulnerable to mixing by heavy rain!
The rain hypothesis could also go in another direction – though this one might be a little tougher to visualise. When cold, denser rainwater goes down into the lakes during the rainy season, it shoves CO2-rich water upwards6. At shallower depths, this CO2-rich water forms bubbles, which lower the water’s density and cause it to speed up to the surface even quicker. This in turn means that we have a continuous water flow that keeps driving deeper, more CO2-rich water upwards, eventually culminating in the limnic eruption.
With Shanklin calling attention to the significance of drought and rain in the Kom legend and the scientific hypotheses surrounding the impact of drought and cold rainfall on limnic eruptions, a fascinating picture can be drawn about the life cycle of this phenomenon in the Cameroon grassfields. Still, none of it conclusive, and amongst scientists, there’s still no consensus as to the actual triggers of the limnic eruptions in 1984 and 1986. All the same, it’s pretty evident that geomythology can offer some insight into the workings of a rare phenomenon!
At present, de-gassing facilities have been built at both Lakes Nyos and Monoun, which consistently remove gas built up. Though the lake continues to be infused with gas, there have been no eruptions since.
3. Volcano Nyiragongo, an Ancient Evil Spirit (Another Congolese Geomyth)
Tales abound about the ghosts and wicked spirits that haunt the crater of a Mount Nyiragongo. Mount Nyrigagongo is an active volcano located in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), only about 6 miles from Goma, a city home to more than 1.5 million people.
The volcano is rarely ever fully quiet, with a lake of lava always murmuring within its crater. The myth surrounding this volcano goes like this:
Two powerful spirits, Ryang’ombe and Nyiragongo had waged a long war. Ryang’ombe lived and still lives in Muhuvura Mountain, while Nyiragongo lived in Mount Mikeno. One day, Ryang’ombe got the better of Nyiragongo and cut open the Mount Mikeno, slicing off its peak. He then forced Nyiragongo out of Mikeno and into the present-day Mount Nyiragongo. Ryang’ombe then piled hot rocks on top of him and left him there.
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These days, the kinder spirits of the land live in Ryang’ombe’s domain, while the more cruel and profane spirits reside in Nyiragongo.
A little background about the region: Mounts Mikeno, Nyiragongo and Muhuvura all belong to the sprawling Virunga Mountain range of East Africa, which straddles the DRC, Uganda and Rwanda. The Virunga Mountain range is a chain of 8 volcanoes, only 2 of which are still active. These 2 include “our” volcano, Nyiragongo, and another named Nyamuragira.
The East African Rift
The Virunga Mountains formed as a result of something known as the East African Rift. The East African Rift is a phenomenon taking place at the “horn of Africa”, where for the past 22 to 25 million years until present day, the African continent or “plate” is being split into two. As the African plate is ripped apart by divergent or “pull-apart” tectonic forces a few inches every ten years, the outpouring of molten rock from deep inside the Earth has been able to come out to the surface. In the past, this outpouring of lava formed the Virunga mountains as molten rock ran downhill and cooled slowly.
In my opinion, this myth about Mount Nyiragongo says a few non-trivial things about the eruption history of the volcanoes in the Virunga mountain range. If we squint a little, just from the myth, we could infer that Mount Mikeno was once active (i.e. before Ryangombe forced Nyiragongo out of Mikeno) but now isn’t. We can also tell that Nyiragongo wasn’t always the violent monster it is today, and that it came alive only after Mikeno did, possibly long after Mikeno was already inactive.
Interestingly, this order of events inferred from the legend aligns with what we know of the geomorphology of the region. This is that the central mountains (Mikeno, Visoke and Karisimbi) and easternmost mountains (Muhavura, Sabinyo and Gahinga) in the range are no longer active – though they once were – and that the only two active volcanoes that remain are at the westmost end: Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira.
For the first time since 2002, Mount Nyiragongo, erupted on the evening of May 22nd, 2021. The eruption was completely unforeseen, and its results were devastating. At least 30 people were killed, many thousands of people displaced, and over a dozen nearby villages sustained serious damage.
It’s worth it to note that volcano lava exists on a spectrum of viscosity. This viscosity is caused by the presence of silica (chemical formula: SiO2) in magma, so that the more of it present, the more viscous the magma is i.e. the more silica, the thicker it is and the more slowly it crawls across the ground. The lava that erupts from Nyiragongo has such a little silica and is so thin that it’s almost as fluid as water and can travel up to speeds greater than 26 meters per second! For context, the sprinting record held by the fastest human alive stands at about 12 meters per second. Against Nyiragongo’s creepily fast lava, whose temperature measures upwards of 1000 0C, most of us wouldn’t stand a chance.
This story doesn’t end here, though. Lake Kivu, which I mentioned earlier in the bit on ‘Exploding Lakes’, is important here, its fate intimately interwoven with that of the volcano Nyiragongo. We’ll get to it in a moment.
Let’s Talk about Risk
So far, we’ve seen that geomyths can offer unexpected insight into natural disasters of a recurrent nature, such as floods, limnic eruptions and volcanic eruptions. We’ve also seen that these stories could potentially help us make predictions about the risk of some disaster coming to pass.
To illustrate this concept further, take Patrick Nunn, a researcher of geology and geography at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. Nunn’s purely scientific assessment of the volcanoes on Kadavu, a Fijian island, suggested that the volcanoes had not been active in several tens of thousands of years, ages before humans had settled on the island.
However, after coming across local myths that described much more recent eruptions, in 2002 when a road on the island was cut open, exposing previously hidden parts of the island’s geology, Nunn changed his mind: there had almost certainly been volcanic eruptions long after humans started living on the island – in direct contradiction with his previous conclusion.
How much more can myths tell us about the potential for catastrophic events?
Lake Kivu, A Ticking Time-Bomb
Lake Kivu sits on the border between Rwanda and the DRC. Like Mount Nyiragongo (which is next to Lake Kivu) Lake Kivu is one of the features of the East African Rift and is subject to all sorts of seismic activity and tectonic forces. The lake holds about 300 cubic kilometers of dissolved CO2 gas, as well as about 60 cubic kilometers of dissolved methane.
In an interesting turn of events, several tonnes of this methane is being pumped out from deep down in the lake and is being used to produce electricity in Rwanda. Many think that this is a good thing. This is because apart from the obvious fact of increased energy production, it turns out that methane is less soluble than CO2 and therefore is the more likely culprit to escape from the lake in a limnic eruption.
I want to state for the record that a limnic eruption at Lake Kivu would be utterly catastrophic. An eruption could theoretically spit out up to 5% of the current global annual greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, which already has alarming implications for global temperatures. Furthermore, compared to 1986, when about 14,000 people lived near Lake Nyos at the time of the limnic eruption, today more than two million people live near Lake Kivu, including the people of Goma. The scale of tragedy and destruction would be even greater.
There is controversy in the scientific community as to whether Kivu has ever actually erupted before…
Nonetheless, for now, Lake Kivu is stable. The lake contains an insane amount of gas, yes. But the thing is gas in the regions of the lake where it counts most would need to double in concentration before it reaches the saturation point and makes eruption an imminent threat.
Also, the 2021 eruption of Mount Nyiragongo did not result in a notable release of any of the gases trapped in Lake Kivu (reassuring news). That being said, an extraordinarily powerful volcanic eruption is one of several ways that a limnic eruption can be triggered.
Two other triggers include a very strong earthquake…and human activity. The irony is that the ‘human activity’ of chief concern here is the pumping of methane for energy production. To this day, researchers still disagree about which methods of pumping are least risky and least likely to trigger an eruption.
There is still a lot about the history of Lake Kivu that remains unknown. For example, are the gas levels in the lake rising? Also, with the complexities in geology and in the volcanic system at the East African Rift zone surrounding Lake Kivu, predicting rising gas concentrations and a limnic eruption is pretty difficult.
There is also controversy as to whether Kivu has ever actually erupted before.
One study in paleo-geology rather skews the historical debate in one direction. The study indicates that huge flooding events hundreds of years ago, when Lake Kivu was smaller, might have triggered mass gas release by mixing the layered structures of the lake. In essence, evidence of limnic eruptions in the sediment deposited in the lake suggest that eruptions happened when the climate was unusually wet. We’re still not sure, though, how much energy it would take for a flood or heavy rain in the present day to trigger a gas release in Lake Kivu. Not the most reassuring thing in the world.
Sustainability and Sustainable Development
So, besides cluing us into fertile research questions as we study perplexing natural phenomena, what else could geomyths be useful for?
Well, geomyths tell us something about how the people of a land even regard such natural disasters and could provide insight into policy design that protects them. For example, South African engineer Estelle Targrove has studied myths that surround lightning in South Africa, where many people are killed by lightning every year10. Targrove did this to qualify how belief in these lightning myths translate to human vulnerability during lightning storms.
That said, we now arrive at everyone’s favourite buzz words. Sustainability and sustainable development.
I like this definition of sustainable development from Our Common Future:
“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Given this definition, a lot of stuff go into crafting sustainability policies that actually do what they’re supposed to do: optimise vital resources like water and energy for generations to come. These “stuff” include local customs.
Mozambican Farmers and Drought
In a 2019 study, Mozambican researcher Daniela Salite looked at a community of small-scale farmers in southern Mozambique and examined what cultural and religious beliefs these farmers held about the origin of drought in their land8. Salite also looked at how the farmers’ cultural beliefs formed and why some people still continued to subscribe to them.
…several attributed the drought to punishment by a powerful supernatural entity…
The author articulates the purpose of this study this way:
“Farmers’ beliefs about drought causes, and their underlying reasoning for those beliefs, are what will primarily influence their perception of their own capacity to adapt, their motivation to respond, and their behavioural responses.”
More and more, cultural beliefs have become recognised as crucial in the adaptation to and mitigation of a disaster, such as climate change, for example8. This is because they have the power to mould a people’s relationship with their environment and influence their attitudes to the hazards themselves.
In Salite’s findings, there was a diversity of reasoning behind the farmers’ drought response. This reasoning included belief in Abrahamic religion, ancestral worship, or other indigenous traditions. As a result, several attributed the drought to punishment by a powerful supernatural entity, while decisions, such as what kind of crop to plant – drought-resistant or otherwise – were influenced both by cultural belief and a desire to conform to the community as a whole. As far as adaptation goes, the farmers put some emphasis on performing supernatural rituals to end the drought.
From this, it’s pretty clear that understanding local myths should factor seriously into how sustainability policy is designed and enforced. That is, should we go in first with our starry-eyed vigour, our fancy technology and our non-traditional ideas, or should we take the time first, for science education and maximise the chances that local leaders will comply with our policies?
“How far can human memory, preserved in stories, [truly] extend back in time?”
Here, it would be fair to conclude that geomyths can be a gold mine of information on the cultural heritage of a people, the human psyche and the geological processes that have shaped our world. However, there are still ways in which geomythology will fall short (plot twist!).
For one thing, myths are constructed to preserve and convey vital information and tend not to waste words on the things its proponents expect their community already knows like figures of speech or long-lost customs2. As these legends are passed down from one generation to the next, some of these implicit assumptions are lost and we in the present might find that we’re not able to decode every aspect of a myth, which in turn influences our takeaways.
Another aspect to consider that influences how seriously we take a myth, was noted by researcher Adrienne Mayor: “How far can human memory, preserved in stories, [truly] extend back in time?” At what age do the accounts preserved in a myth lose their value?
Regardless of the answer to these important questions, geomythology is a rich, under-explored field in the study of our landscape. Geomythology can inform risk analysis on natural hazards in African communities, and with sustainability goals in mind, can improve the design of policy targeted both at managing scarce resources and dealing with extreme climate events, such as droughts and floods.
If chunks of our world are driven by life cycles, periods of destruction and rebirth, then maybe our oldest stories, these legends of the earth, are amongst the most promising means to understand them.
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What’d you think of the myths in this post? Would you have interpreted them differently?
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References
- Leeming, David A., Creation myths of the world: an encyclopedia, Santa Barbara, ABC-CLIO, 2010.
- Masse, W. B., E. W. Barber, L. Piccardi and P.T. Barber, Exploring the nature of myth and its role in science (2007), Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 273, 9–28. DOI: 10.1144/GSL.SP.2007.273.01.02
- Vitaliano, D., Geomythology: geological origins of myths and legends (2007), Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 273,1-7.
- Helm, C and J. Benoit, Geomythology in Southern Africa (2019), The Digging Stick, vol 36(1).
- Wade, R. P., P. G. Eriksson, H.C.J. deW Rautenbach and G.A. Duncan, Southern African cosmogenic geomythology (“following a star”) of the Zion Christian Church(2014), Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0035919X.2014.905880.
- Kusakabe, M., Lakes Nyos and Monoun Gas Disasters (Cameroon)—Limnic Eruptions Caused by Excessive Accumulation of Magmatic CO2 in Crater Lakes (2017), Geochemistry Monograph Series, vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 1–50.
- Shanklin, E., Exploding lakes and maleficent water in Grassfields legends and myth (1989), Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research, 39, 233-246.
- Salite, D., Explaining the uncertainty: understanding small-scale farmers’ cultural beliefs and reasoning of drought causes in Gaza Province, Southern Mozambique (2019), Agriculture and Human Values, 36:427–441, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-09928-z.
- Pearl, J. and D. Mackenzie, The Book of Why, New York, Basic Books, 2018.
- Targrove, E and I. Jandrell, Lightning myths in southern Africa (2014), Natural Hazards, DOI 10.1007/s11069-014-1579-4.
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Title image: Picture of Julio Pomar‘s Noah’s Ark (2003). Shot by Pedro Riberiro Simoes. License.