Poseidon's Horses: Plate Tectonics and Earthquake Storms in the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean (original) (raw)
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Journal of Structural Geology, 2001
Most coastal sectors which show evidence of Holocene coseismic uplift in Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean were raised during a short period called here the Early Byzantine tectonic paroxysm (EBTP) between the middle of the fourth and the middle of the sixth century. A.D. The areas uplifted at that time include Cephaloha and Zante in the Ionian Islands, Lechaion and the Perachora Peninsula in the Gulf of Corinth, the Pelion coast of Thessaly, Antikythira and the whole of western Crete, a coastal sector near Alanya in southern Turkey, and the entire Levant coast from Hatay (Turkey) to Syria and the Lebanon. The amount of the EBTP uplift was generally between 0.5 m and 1.0 m but reached a maximum of about 9 m in s0uthwestem Crete.
Geosciences, 2024
Human habitat is much controlled by the landscape and its ongoing processes overtime. Some of these processes occur instantaneously and are often triggered by seismic events with a major destructive impact on the human-built environment. Helike, on the southwest shore of the Gulf of Corinth, is a characteristic case of an ancient habitation site bearing witness to repetitious natural disasters from the Early Bronze Age to the Late Antiquity. The Late Classical-Hellenistic site, revived in the Helike plain after the 373 BC earthquake, has been systematically investigated thanks to the multidisciplinary research and excavations of the Helike Project in the last 35 years. This work has significantly enriched the historical seismicity of the region and shed light on past human-environment relationships. The study of the architectural remains excavated by the Helike Project, coupled with geological and soil micromorphological analysis on archaeological soils and sediments of the settlement, demonstrates a constant effort of the Helike people to reconcile with the elements of nature. Our results underline the destruction of a flourishing textile dyeworks operated at the settlement, due to a strong earthquake which triggered extensive morphological changes in a broader area. These changes include co-seismic liquefaction and lateral spreading, and post-seismic changes in the gradient of river channels. The former changes attest to an uplift in the headwater area and subsidence in the lowland plain of the ravine flowing near the ancient site.
Quaternary International, 2010
An up to 9 m uplift of western Crete, a cluster of coastal uplifts in the East Mediterranean radiocarbon dated approximately w1500 BP, as well as historical and archaeological data are evidence for major, although poorly documented seismic destruction on a nearly-Mediterranean scale in the 4th to 5th c. AD, including the destruction of the Nile Delta in Egypt by a tsunami in AD365. These data represent parts of a puzzle for historians, archaeologists, geologists and seismologists.
Late Minoan (LM) IIIB (∼1300-1200 B.C.) represents a crucial period in the history of Bronze Age Crete, heralding the transition to the Iron Age through a wave of site destruction and abandonment. According to the traditional view, earthquakes may have played a significant role in these events. A new archaeoseismological approach is proposed to test this hypothesis and to attribute destruction and abandonment to earthquakes. Potential earthquake archaeological effects (PEAEs) are defined and documented at LM IIIB sites. Synchronisms of PEAEs between sites are based on ceramic evidence. The reliability of the PEAEs is furthermore assessed using empirical ground-motion relationships defined for three types of earthquake mechanisms that can be considered to occur in the seismotectonic context of Crete:
Annals of Geophysics, 2019
Earthquakes were so well known a phenomenon in antiquity as to inspire myths and require the creation of apotropaic cults. The stories linked to Poseidon, god of the sea, earthquakes and tsunami, had their origins during the Bronze Age, when Poseidon is the most frequently named god. In addition to literary traditions, we are able to recognize quite well in archaeological excavations traces of earthquakes and sometimes also of tsunami. The question we here investigate is how Bronze Age people formulated a practical response to these events in terms of suitably resistant architecture. And what of these techniques still can be used in modern times. In Aegean Bronze Age architecture, a series of anti−seismic practices were early developed during the more than two millennia. In Minoan palaces in particular, lighter walls were superimposed on stone ones built at basement or ground floor levels. Using vertical, horizontal and cross timbers they put up wooden frames into which stone and mudbrick elements were integrated and bonded, and over which clay and plaster were later applied. Recent research has improved our knowledge not only about the buildings and their basic structures, but also about more detailed aspects, such as the expertise of the Minoan masters in developing various types of plasters with different degrees of elasticity. This contribution will investigate how extensively these techniques are spread in the Mediterranean basin and elsewhere, both in ancient and modern times. And how they can be applied to contemporary architecture in a more sustainable way.
Historical seismicity, palaeoseismicity and seismic risk in Western Macedonia, Northern Greece
Journal of Geodynamics, 1998
Western Macedonia, Northern Greece, was a seismically quiescent region for one or more centuries, and was regarded as a nearly aseismic, rigid block inside a broad zone of distributed continental deformation and faulting, and a region of minimum seismic risk. Consequently, the May 13, 1995 destructive earthquake (M = 6.6) which hit this assumed aseismic zone was a surprise for scientists, government and population.