Apocalypse

Earthquakes, Archaeology, and the Wrath of God

Amos Nur, Dawn Burgess

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780691236988
• Topic: Ciencias físicas
• Subtopic: Sismología y vulcanismo

What if Troy was not destroyed in the epic battle immortalized by Homer? What if many legendary cities of the ancient world did not meet their ends through war and conquest as archaeologists and historians believe, but in fact were laid waste by a force of nature so catastrophic that religions and legends describe it as the wrath of god? Apocalypse brings the latest scientific evidence to bear on biblical accounts, mythology, and the archaeological record to explore how ancient and modern earthquakes have shaped history--and, for some civilizations, seemingly heralded the end of the world.
Archaeologists are trained to seek human causes behind the ruins they study. Because of this, the subtle clues that indicate earthquake damage are often overlooked or even ignored. Amos Nur bridges the gap that for too long has separated archaeology and seismology. He examines tantalizing evidence of earthquakes at some of the world's most famous archaeological sites in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, including Troy, Jericho, Knossos, Mycenae, Armageddon, Teotihuacán, and Petra. He reveals what the Bible, the Iliad, and other writings can tell us about the seismic calamities that may have rocked the ancient world. He even explores how earthquakes may have helped preserve the Dead Sea Scrolls. As Nur shows, recognizing earthquake damage in the shifted foundations and toppled arches of historic ruins is vital today because the scientific record of world earthquake risks is still incomplete. Apocalypse explains where and why ancient earthquakes struck--and could strike again.

CHAPTER 1

King Agamemnon’s Capital

Archaeologists of my generation, who attended university in the immediate aftermath of Schaeffer’s great work (1948), were brought up to view earthquakes, like religion, as an explanation of archaeological phenomena to be avoided if at all possible.

—Elizabeth French, Evidence for an Earthquake at Mycenae

At the entrance to the ruins of the ancient city of Mycenae in Greece, directly beneath the famous Lion Gate, is a sight to make an earthquake scientist stop in awe. The immense stone blocks of the city’s outer wall rest atop a smooth, steep incline of whitish, polished rock, a natural bulwark some 4 meters high, which must project unassailable strength to the untrained eye. To a geologist, however, the slick stone surface tells another story. This is a fault scarp, the surface formed by an actively moving fault, where the earth’s surface has been violently broken and distorted during earthquakes. The wall on top of the scarp is called a “Cyclopean wall,” because its huge, dressed stone blocks are so massive that building such a wall would seem a superhuman feat. Sitting atop the steep slope of the fault scarp, this construction must have reassured the defenders of ancient Mycenae, presenting a formidable barrier to attack. The truth, however, is that the fault itself is a plane of weakness in the earth’s crust and is under continual stress. It was a silent, constant threat to the city’s oblivious inhabitants (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 In this view of the approach to Mycenae, the light gray surface beneath the Cyclopean wall is a fault scarp, clear evidence of the earthquake hazard at this site.

I first saw this remarkable sight in 1993, when visiting that ancient city with a group of geophysicists and archaeologists, led by Elizabeth French. For decades, Dr. French had been a lead archaeologist excavating Mycenae, and at the time of my visit she was the director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens. As we passed through the Lion Gate, she and the other archaeologists focused on the huge, dressed stones, the impressive work of ancient hands. They did not know the fault scarp for what it was: evidence of the work of ancient earthquakes.

Our tour group had first come together in Athens, as part of an archaeoseismology conference that Dr. French had helped organize. “Archaeoseismology” is a recently coined term for the study of how earthquakes affect archaeology, and this conference was, I believe, the first time a group of archaeologists and geophysicists had ever formally convened to discuss evidence for ancient earthquakes and share ideas across the two disciplines. Two factors, in particular, struck me about the meeting: the first was the beauty of the venue, a restored building directly under the Acropolis. The second was the mutual bafflement that characterized the interaction between the earth scientists and the archaeologists at the meeting.

While we earth scientists presented our seismic hazard maps, geological trenching results, and engineering simulations, most of the archaeologists enjoyed cups of coffee outside as they absorbed the ambiance of the Acropolis. When they presented their results, many of the earth scientists did the same. This inattentiveness, I think, reflected not disrespect between the two groups of scientists, but rather each group’s unfamiliarity with the other’s methods and jargon. The level of communication, in any case, was not particularly high, but at least the love of Greek coffee gave us some common ground.

Likewise, the tour of Mycenae was something we could all appreciate from our own perspectives. As our tour group sat on the hill overlooking the excavated site of Mycenae, Dr. French explained that it and many of the surrounding towns and villages had been destroyed over a brief period, around 1200 BC. The walls of the city were destroyed in several places, many buildings were completely demolished, and much of the city burned. Apparently, Mycenae was then abandoned for eternity.

Although she was one of the facilitators of the archaeoseismology meeting, and although she agreed that Mycenae had historically been subject to earthquakes, Dr. French remained unconvinced that earthquakes had been responsible for its ultimate demise, still favoring the scenario that invading enemies had destroyed the city.

The attack, she said, was probably part of a larger invasion involving the entire eastern Mediterranean region. Because there were no obvious nearby powers on land, the invaders no doubt came from the sea. Since there were no historical records of the invasions, it was difficult to know for certain where the armies had originated. In fact, this remains a mystery in the field of archaeology. Why did these so-called Sea Peoples suddenly attack? How massive must the armies have been to effect such absolute destruction? Why, after expending the time and resources to overtake whole cities, did they not stay and occupy those places? If they came by sea, how many ships were required to transport the troops, and why have no remains of those ships been found? After bringing the inhabitants to their knees, did they simply load up and cast back out to sea, looking perhaps for another place to pillage? If not, what became of them?

As we followed Dr. French into the city of Mycenae, we pondered these questions. The outer wall fascinated me, with its irregular sections of varying stone sizes and construction styles, each representing the work of a different period in the city’s history (Figure 1.2). I was vividly reminded of another important ancient city in my native country of Israel—Jerusalem. Like the walls of Mycenae, the city walls of Jerusalem resemble a masonry quilt, its patches delineating repeated damage and repair through the centuries (Figure 1.3). In Jerusalem, those repairs continue to this day, but in Mycenae, as in many other ancient Mediterranean cities, the repairs ended and the city was abandoned.

In Jerusalem, some patches in the walls are sections that were rebuilt after enemy assaults, but many others were made to repair destruction wrought not by man but by nature. Those sections of the city walls were toppled by earthquakes, and were subsequently repaired, many times in Jerusalem’s past. Confronted with such similar construction patterns in the walls of Mycenae, I had to wonder: Could the collapse of that city around 1200 BC have been caused not by an attacking army from the sea but by an earthquake? Perhaps the city was attacked but by a lesser army, or even by an uprising among the oppressed local populace, and its destruction was then facilitated by an earthquake that compromised its defenses. Either scenario might explain many of the puzzles associated with Mycenae’s demise: the suddenness, the absence of a known invader or subsequent occupying force, the immensity of the destruction, and the seeming lack of any strategy whatsoever.

Figure 1.2 This photograph of Mycenae’s ruins illustrates at least four distinct styles of wall construction.

Figure 1.3 The ancient city walls of Jerusalem, like the walls of Mycenae, are a patchwork assembly of different construction styles and ages, delineated in this photograph with black lines. Some of these patches are repairs of earthquake damage. Note the incipient crack in the upper left, probably caused by the 1927 Jericho earthquake.

The more I considered this possibility as the tour continued, the more intrigued I became. As the other earth scientists and I explored the site, we found many features that suggested earthquakes. Soon we began to speculate whether earthquakes might also account for the unexplained destruction of other places at the end of the Bronze Age, around 1200 BC. Fallen structures are scattered liberally around Crete, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan—all areas where we know earthquakes are common today. Could the same reasoning also apply in those places?

That reasoning betrayed my geophysics background, and I think it is one factor in the long-standing rift between geophysicists and archaeologists. My immersion in the study of geophysics, of earthquakes and other random natural phenomena, has made me comfortable with a fact that most people have difficulty accepting: that the earth beneath our feet is neither solid nor immovable but moves irregularly and unpredictably. Of course, cataclysmic earth movements occur infrequently, even in the most seismically active areas, but we earth scientists are trained to think not in terms of human years but on much longer, geologic time scales. To geophysicists, a phenomenon that happens every thousand years or so is a frequent occurrence. When we see a fault, we see the inevitability of earthquakes. For us, there is no discussion of whether, only of when: When did the earth last shake, and when will it shake again?

Archaeologists, on the other hand, immersed as they are in the relics of humankind, in the study of the motives, actions, and consequences of human nature, are preconditioned to seek human action as the cause of human catastrophe. For them, a few thousand years is the largest scope they can hope to encompass within a single paradigm, and even that is a rarity. They also seek to uncover patterns in randomness, patterns that will help them write a history for prehistory. They see the unpredictability of an earthquake as an argument against it, as if, because there is no human causality, it is a deus ex machina, constructed to explain the unexplainable, an act of God. Human action is always the preferable explanation.

THE “SEA PEOPLES” HYPOTHESIS

One line of reasoning that archaeologists have worked and reworked in their effort to find a human explanation for the Late Bronze Age destruction at Mycenae and elsewhere is that invaders came by ship to Mycenae, perhaps from Troy in today’s western Turkey. Troy itself, however, was destroyed at approximately the same time. Who, then, was responsible for the destruction of Troy? Perhaps it was the Hittites, but it is not at all clear that the Hittites were strong enough to mount a campaign at that time, since their own empire was also collapsing. In fact, around 1200 BC, practically every society in the Mediterranean region appears to have met with major damage or destruction, and, for lack of a better explanation, nearly every instance has been attributed at one time or another to invasion by an unknown enemy from the sea.

The key problem behind the Sea Peoples hypothesis has been the failure (at least so far) to determine the aggressors’ identity. The Sea Peoples have been blamed for the collapse of cities in Cyprus, Palestine, Syria, and many others around 1200 BC, but all the likely suspects seem to have been otherwise engaged at the time, either defending their own strongholds or struggling to preserve their own declining social structures. Dr. Robert Morkot (1996) of the University of Exeter writes:

Despite having been favoured until quite recently, this idea of the Sea Peoples migration can no longer be accepted; there is no real evidence to support it. Essentially the Sea Peoples theory was a convenient and plausible invention of the 19th century, designed [largely by the historian Gaston Maspero] to fit the very limited available facts.

If, however, coordinated attacks by the Sea Peoples were not the cause of all this destruction around 1200 BC, what other explanation is there? One way around the problem has been to assume that the Sea Peoples were actually bands of local raiders and that the destruction of so many sites resulted from general lawlessness at the time. What, then, was the cause of this lawlessness? Many theories have been suggested, from sudden advances in weaponry to climate change. As a geophysicist, I have to throw in my own chip: Could earthquakes have played a part?

One of the great historians of the twentieth century, Arnold J. Toynbee (1939), addressed the causes of societal collapse in his massive work, A Study of History. This ten-volume compendium has perhaps had more influence on the thought of historians (and, by extension, archaeologists) than any other work of modern history. In it, Toynbee dismisses the notion that any external influence can be responsible for the collapse of a society. Using examples of some twenty past civilizations around the world, including the Minoans, Mayans, Mycenaeans, Spartans, Andeans, and Hittites, Toynbee argues that, in every case, the cause of societal collapse was internal decay, not external influences of the natural world. (Incidentally, he also dismisses the idea that attacks from without can destroy a civilization, unless...