Continental Intraplate Volcanoes

Abstract

Continental intraplate volcanoes were the premier objects of scientific curiosity and inquiry when the field of volcanology came of age in the second half of the eighteenth century (Chap. 1). One of the pivotal localities where Abraham Gottlob Werner (416) in 1776 thought he had found evidence for the hypothesis that basalt columns had crystallized from cold water is Burg Stolpen in Saxony, about 20 km east of Dresden (Fig. 7.1). In the words of Werner, translated from the German: In the summer of 1776 I visited the most famous basaltic hill in Saxony near Stolpen. I did not find a single trace for volcanic action, not a speck of evidence for a volcanic origin. The internal structure of the hill showed in fact the opposite. Now I dared to declare for the first time publicly that not all basalt is of volcanic origin which also includes the basalt from Stolpen. In short, basalts are not of volcanic but of wet origin.