Culture Destroyed by 1815 Volcano Rediscovered [4min]

It's not often someone stumbles over a "lost kingdom." But that's what a volcano scientist has done on a remote island in Indonesia. The kingdom, called Tambora, disappeared in a matter of minutes in 1815, under billions of tons of rock and ash during a violent volcanic eruption. University of Rhode Island volcanologist Haraldur Sigurdsson has spent 20 years roaming the islands of Indonesia, a place known for apocalyptic eruptions. He was especially drawn to a huge volcano on the island of Sumbawa. "I knew that it was the largest and most important volcanic eruption on the Earth because it caused the year without a summer, a big global climate change, and it also led to the death of about 117,000 people just on this island and on neighboring islands," Sigurdsson said. Mount Tambora launched 100 cubic kilometers of rock into the air -- 10 times more than Italy's Vesuvius, which buried Pompeii in 79 A.D., and 150 times more than Mount St. Helen's. So much ash and dust filled the air that crops failed and people starved on the other side of the planet. Sigurdsson will return to the site next year. In the meantime, Indonesian archeologists plan to excavate more of what some hope could be the "Eastern Pompeii."