Mythology and Reality - It's said, there was a principality here in the 15th century, with a noble couple at the top of the state. It was called Tengger, as the people living around are called today. The noble couple could not get children, so they went up to the Mount Bromo to ask the gods for help. The god's helped under the condition, that they had to sacrifice their last child. So they threw their 25th child [!] into the crater. The child's voice appeared then and ordered the people to hold an annual festivity. That's, what the people do every year. It's called 'Kassada' and they sacrifice food, flowers and livestock. Festivities like that are also common on Bali.
Mount Bromo, in the foreground the Hindu Temple.
These mythologies together with many others who are still living around here in Indonesia are explanations of the past, when people didn't know anything about geology and science. Now, in the 21st century, this kind of explanation is outdated since long. Though, still a majority of people here believes the old, religious explanations. That's because schools fail totally. The Javanese people are kept stupid. Also the teachers are as same dull as their pupils. They take bribes from their pupils - therefore the pupils get better marks. That's what the youngsters here learn in school - that money is anything. And that's it. It's a totally corrupt and missent society.
There are ten major tectonic plates on earth. The earth is mostly a liquid planet; only on the outermost crust it's firm. The plates are 'swimming' on the liquid inside, and at several places they squeeze against each other. Here on Java the Australian plate is squeezing against the Euroasian plate, sliding under it with an average speed of the growth of fingernails, some 12 centimeters a year. At the plates edges the pressure piles up mountains in long-term and causes earthquakes from time to time, when the pressure grows to big. Whole Java came out of the sea due to these movements. These plates edges also are partially open connections to the inner, liquid part of the earth. When pressure grows, volcanos break out in eruptions, and part of the liquid from inside the earth is coming to the surface.
