While millions of people around the world know natural gas as the clean-burning, powerful resource that oil and gas drilling companies such as Triple Diamond Energy Corp. provide to fulfill their most important energy needs, it was not always known as such.  Early societies, having no in-depth knowledge of the scientific process, did not realize how the vast stores of natural gas and unrefined crude oil reserves would do to future societies.

The Story of the Oracle

The invisible and powerful natural gas that lay buried beneath the earth played a role in inadvertently shaping the course of early Greek civilization.  Most people have heard of the Oracle at Delphi, one of Greece’s most important historical sites, but few realize how natural gas was responsible for its creation.  However, energy companies like Triple Diamond Energy Corp. are well aware of how this precious resource has affected the world over the millennia.

The Oracle was a person chosen to be the “mouthpiece of Apollo,” delivering messages from the heavens and prophesies on important local matters such as when to go to war or what the best months were for crop planting.  The Oracle was even occasionally consulted to settle disputes for Greeks wrangling with moral dilemmas.  The Oracle did all this while in a trance-like state, in which her cryptic replies were attributed to supernatural forces for centuries.

Super Natural, or Subterranean?

Only now does science confirm that there was nothing supernatural about the Oracle at all.  The trance which the Oracle stayed in was thought by ancient Greeks to be caused by ethylene gas, not by any forces beyond the realm of mortal man.  A small sweet-smelling spring which bubbled into the temple contained significant levels of this gas, as well as methane and ethane vapors. 

Given the small chamber within the temple that the Oracle made her predictions from, it can be easily understood how fumes from these gases could have put her in a narcotic trance, well-suited for the cryptic and rambling utterances that she was famous for.  In fact, history notes that several of the Oracle’s attendants suffered sickness, convulsions and death while inside the temple.

Natural Gas Below Delphi

The source for all of this ethylene is a result of the natural geologic formations beneath the Temple at Delphi.  In the limestone deep under the Temple’s foundation lie two intersecting ground faults, along each of which the natural gas flowed.  Small fissures in the limestone allowed ethylene to seep upward, out of the earth and into the waiting nostrils of Greece’s most revered seer.  Over time, the influence of the Oracle waned, possibly as a result of diminishing supplies of the gas rising from the fissures.

It’s hard to believe that natural gas lying deep within the earth could have shaped societies even before it was discovered as an energy source.  However, history paints an interesting picture of how the same types of natural gas mined today by companies like Triple Diamond Energy Corp. have shaped the world’s cultures for centuries.