The Long-Lost 8th Wonder of the World May Have Been Found

They were called the Pink and White Terraces of Lake Rotomahana, and they were in the Rotorua district of New Zealand. There were two lakes nearby, called Rotomakariri (Cold Lake) and Rotomahana (Warm Lake) by the local Maori. Lake Rotomahana was home to the spectacular Travertine terraces caused by mineral deposits from nearby hot springs.

Both sets of terraces were fed by water from two geysers on a hill above Lake Rotomahana. It carried silica that crystallized over hundreds of years, forming the pair of terraces through a geologic process called “sintering.”

The Pink Terraces — Otukapuarangi, or “fountain of the clouded sky” — were the largest of their kind anywhere, and were referred to by some as the “8th wonder of the world.” At least they were, until Mount Tarawera erupted through the center of Lake Rotomahana on June 10, 1886, and obliterated them. Or did it?

The terraces were the premier tourist attraction of New Zealand in the 1800s, with visitors reportedly coming from across the world to see them. Locals must’ve navigated for the tourists, because the exact location of the terraces was never recorded.

Now two researchers, Rex Bunn and Sascha Nolden, have published research that suggests the terraces are still there beside the new lake, but hidden under 10-15 meters of ash.

Their confidence is based on the discovery of a 19th-century diary belonging to geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter. His field notes, from 1859, detail a compass survey he conducted of the area around old Lake Rotomahana.

But the Tarawere eruption mangled the landscape so badly that everything’s been moved around, rendering straightforward navigation from von Hochstetter’s coordinates impossible. Instead, Bunn and Nolden have been developing a conversion algorithm to make sense of things.

“We would have put in 2,500 hours of research in the last 12 months,” Bunn said. "We're confident, to the best of our ability, we have identified the terrace locations. We're closer than anyone has ever been in the last 130 years."

At: http://bigthink.com/robby-berman/the-long-lost-8th-wonder-of-the-world-may-have-been-found



New Zealand's Pink and White Terraces, shortly before being buried by an 1886 eruption.