Jelle Zeilinga de Boer - Earthquakes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Seismic Disruptions

Earthquakes

in Human History

The Far-Reaching

Effects of Seismic

Disruptions

Jelle Zeilinga de Boer

and

Donald Theodore Sanders

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Princeton and Oxford

Copyright 2005 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, William Street, Princeton,

New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Market Place,

Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1SY

All Rights Reserved

Fourth printing, and first paperback printing, 2007

Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-691-12786-6

Paperback ISBN-10: 0-691-12786-7

The Library of Congress has cataloged the cloth edition of this book as follows

Zeilinga de Boer, Jelle.

Earthquakes in human history : the far-reaching effects of seismic disruptions /

Jelle Zeilinga de Boer, Donald Theodore Sanders.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-691-05070-8 (cloth : acid-free paper)

EarthquakesHistory. EarthquakesSocial aspects. EarthquakesEnvironmental aspects. SeismologyHistory. Science and civilization.

I. Sanders, Donald Theodore. II. Title.

QE521.Z45 2005

363.34'95'09dc22 2004040122

pup.princeton.edu

The following publishers have generously given permission to use quotations from copyrighted works: From The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault. Copyright 1962 by Mary Renault. Copyright renewed 1990 by Constance Bella Mullard and Graham John Sonnenberg. Used with permission of Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Reproduced with permission also of Curtis Brown Ltd., London, on behalf of the Estate of Mary Renault / From Candide by Voltaire. Reproduced with permission of Penguin Books Ltd. / From Causes of Catastrophe by L. Don Leet, 1948 by McGraw-Hill. Reproduced with permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies / From Departure to the Sea by Myron Brinig in Continents End A Collection of California Writing (Joseph Henry Jackson, editor), 1944 by Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill. Reproduced with permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies / From Diodorus Reprinted with permission of the publishers and the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library from Diodorus Siculus: Volume IV Library of translated by C. H. Oldfather, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946. The Loeb Classical Library is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College / From Earthquakes and Geological Discovery by Bruce A. Bolt, 1993 by Scientific American Library. Reprinted with permission of Henry Holt & Co., LLC. / From Meteorologica by Aristotle. Reprinted with permission of the publishers and the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library from Aristotle: Volume VII translated by H. D. P. Lee, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1952. The Loeb Classical Library is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College / From Natural Disasters by Patrick L. Abbott, 1999 by McGraw-Hill. Reproduced with permission of The McGraw-Hill Companies / From The New Madrid Earthquakes by James Lal Penick, Jr. Reprinted with permission of the University of Missouri Press. Copyright 1981 by the Curators of the University of Missouri / From Sparta by Humphrey Michell. Reprinted with permission of Cambridge University Press.

eISBN: 978-0-691-23420-5

R0

To my wife, Felicit,

for her unwavering enthusiasm and patience

Jelle Zeilinga de Boer

In loving memory:

To my sister, Barbara Sanders Bradshaw,

and to our parents,

Hazel Broach Sanders and Theodore Peter Sanders,

for so very much, right from the beginning

Donald Theodore Sanders

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xv

Table of Conversions xvii

Earthquakes: Origins and Consequences

SIDEBAR:

INDUCED EARTHQUAKES

SIDEBAR:

MARK TWAINS EARTHQUAKE ALMANAC

In the Holy Land: Earthquakes and the Hand of God

The Decline of Ancient Sparta: A Tale of Hoplites, Helots, and a Quaking Earth

SIDEBAR:

EURIPIDES, HOMER, AND ARISTOTLE

Earthquakes in England: Echoes in Religion and Literature

The Great Lisbon Earthquake and the Axiom Whatever Is, Is Right

SIDEBAR:

THE WONDERFUL ONE-HOSS-SHAY

New Madrid, Missouri, in 1811: The Once and Future Disaster

SIDEBAR:

A DISASTROUS REPRISE?

Fire, and Politics in San Francisco

SIDEBAR:

CAUSES OF QUAKES IN THE BAY AREA

Japans Great Kanto Earthquake: Hell Let Loose on Earth

SIDEBAR

: THE KAMAKURA EARTHQUAKE OF 1257 AND THE RISE OF THE LOTUS SECT

Peru in 1970: Chaos in the Andes

SIDEBAR:

IN CHILETSUNAMIS, DEVASTATION, AND DARWIN

The 1972 Managua Earthquake: Catalyst for Revolution

Afterword

Glossary

Notes and References

Index

THERE IS A WIDESPREAD PERCEPTION that the sciences and the humanities are incompatible, that they have little or nothing in common. What do history, the arts, great literature have to do with physics, chemistry, biologyor earth science? In 1959 the British scholar C. P. Snow analyzed that question in his widely read book The Two Snow attributed the problem to misinterpretation and lack of understanding, and in his book he attempts to reconcile the two cultures.

The notion that Snows two cultures are at odds is trenchantly expressed in a novel published in 1983 by the American author Trevanian in a scene where one of the characters warns another:

Beware the attraction of the pure sciences. They are pure only in the way an ancient nun isbloodless, without passion. No, no. Stick to the humanistic studies where, though the truth is more difficult to establish and the proofs are more fragile, yet there is the breath of living man in

One of the present authors (Zeilinga de Boer) has attempted to bring the two cultures together at Wesleyan University in his course Geological in which he demonstrates to liberal-arts students that the sciences are not bloodlessthat, in the earth sciences in particular, something akin to the breath of living man can be seen in such phenomena as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. In his lectures de Boer discusses selected geological events, describing their origins while placing emphasis on the many ways in which they have affected people, societies, cultures, even history itself.

This book grew out of de Boers lectures. The theme of the present volume is the human dimension of earthquakes. Ways in which the humanities and volcanism are intertwined are discussed in a companion volume, Volcanoes in Human History: The Far-Reaching Effects of Major Eruptions (Princeton University Press, 2002).

Earthquakes are treated only descriptively in most books, the descriptions concerned mainly with the resulting destruction and the number of casualties. Many of these short-lived events, however, have had long-lasting aftereffects. Some of the events can be described as catalytic, their aftereffects giving rise to later events, whether environmental, economic, or cultural, that may at first appear unrelated.