Oct. 9, 2006 —A lack of oxygen might have inspired the prophecies at the Temple of
Apollo in the Greek town of Delphi, according to a new study.
Published in the current issue of the journal Geology, the research contradicts a
previous study suggesting that the Delphic priestess, known as pythia, who issued the prophecies was high on ethylene gas rising from bedrock cracks at
the intersection of two faults directly beneath the temple.
According to Giuseppe Etiope, a geologist at the National Institute
of Geophysics and Volcanology in Rome, the pythia's altered
state was likely due to methane-induced hypoxia — oxygen
deprivation caused by methane gas leaking into the temple's small, non-aerated chamber.
Perched in the mountains of Phokis on the foothills of Mount
Parnassos 100 miles northwest of Athens, the Delphi sanctuary was one of ancient Greece's most sacred sites from 700 B.C. until A.D. 381, when it was destroyed by the Romans.
The biographer Plutarch (A.D. 46-120), who served as a priest in the
temple for many years, left a detailed account of how the oracle
worked.
Prophecies were delivered by the pythia, a woman who held the
position of oracle and would act as the sun god Apollo's mouthpiece.
During her trance, she sat upon a tripod in the Adyton, a small
underground chamber bathed in sweet vapors.
Various excavations failed to find any sign of gases emanating
from the earth. But in the late 1990s, a U.S. team led by
geologist Jelle De Boer of the Wesleyan University in
Connecticut, found traces of methane, ethane and ethylene.
De Boer concluded that ethylene, a central nervous system stimulant that can
produce euphoria and delirium, was a probably an essential agent in the pythia's
consultation.
But the authors of the new study aren't so sure.
"We did discover signs of gas exhalation in Delphi, but the
possibility of ethylene intoxication is very
unlikely," Etiope told Discovery News.
