Is a volcano an underground fire eruption? Originally, the English name of "volcano" (volcano) was transliterated from the Vulcano volcano located on the Lipari Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. In ancient times, volcanic activity was frequent in the Mediterranean region. When people saw volcanic eruptions, they thought that some substances were burning underground, so they named the mountain after Vulcan, the Roman god of fire, to describe this phenomenon of underground fire eruption.
In China, historical documents mentioning volcanoes are also not uncommon. For example, in the Pre-Qin period, the "Shanhai Jing" (Classic of Mountains and Seas) mentioned "the Mountain of Flaming Fire"; in the "Wei Book" compiled by Wei Shou of the Northern Qi Dynasty, it was recorded that the Yueban Kingdom "had a volcano in the south"; in the "Reading History and Geography", compiled by Gu Zuyu of the Qing Dynasty, there is a special section on "volcanoes" under Hequ County, which is described as "the volcano is five li west of the county, on the east bank of the Yellow River. There are holes on the mountain. If you throw grass into the holes, smoke and flames will come out, and you can cook food with it". However, if the ancient Romans mistook the real volcanic phenomenon for some substances "burning underground", the Chinese people did the opposite. They often mistook the underground combustion of substances (usually self-ignition of coal or coal gas, and also the combustion of oil and gas reservoirs) for volcanoes, such as the "volcano" in Hequ County mentioned above, which was later verified by modern geologist Zhang Hongzhao to be self-ignition of coal seams, not geological volcanoes.
Now, a volcano in the ordinary sense refers to underground magma in a high-temperature state (above 1000°C) accompanied by boiling gases, which erupts and overflows through certain channels to form conical, shield-shaped and other shapes of hills and debris. This includes not only the shape and characteristics of the volcano itself, the movement and channels of magma, but also the form and products of volcanic eruptions, which is a complete geological process. Volcanic activity is a symbol of the vitality of the Earth.