NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC HISTORY 1FROM THE EDITORAmy Briggs, Executive EditorHistory’s mysteries are often solved by teams working
centuries apart. The oracle at Delphi, ancient Greece’s favorite place for
seeking divine advice, confounded many scholars who sought the place
where priestesses told the future. Classical accounts described the process:
The Pythia (Apollo’s priestess) entered a cavern, inhaled sweet-smelling
vapors (called pneuma) emanating from the depths, went into a trance, and
then uttered the words of the gods.
In the 1890s archaeologists drew on these accounts when they first
excavated the site on Parnassós. Unable to find the Pythia’s sacred space
and the intoxicating pneuma, they concluded that the vapors were just
“urban legends” passed down by the ancients.
These early excavations revealed important geologic insights that became
apparent to scholars in the 1990s. Combining science with history, an
archaeologist, a geologist, a chemist, and a toxicologist banded together
and found that the pneuma were real: the product of geologic faults
underneath Delphi causing gases, including sweet-smelling ethylene, to
rise into the Pythia’s chamber and induce her trances. Putting all these
pieces together renders a fuller picture of the past and also serves as a
reminder of the debt owed to those teammates who came before.