Fault Near Crete Said To Be Responsible for 365 CE Quake

Tsunamis like the the one that devastated ancient Alexandria in A.D. 365 may hit the Mediterranean relatively often, a new study argues. Scientists say they have pinpointed the geological fault—off the coast of the Greek island of Crete—that likely slipped during a huge quake and caused the ancient tsunami.

Massive earthquakes—greater than magnitude 8—may strike the Mediterranean roughly every 800 years, the research suggests.

But other scientists say that not enough is known about these faults to predict how often such quakes might strike. They argue that the 365 disaster may have been unique.

The authors of the new study measured the remains of corals, algae, and other sea life that run in a band along the coast of Crete.

"The ancient shoreline resembles a bathtub ring high above the sea on the cliff face," said Beth Shaw of the University of Cambridge in England, lead author of the study.

The findings, published in Nature Geoscience, fix a date to when western Crete was suddenly lifted up, strengthening the tie between this event and the tsunami (see a map of Crete).

The team narrowed down the date of the uplift to within a few decades of 365, bolstering the idea that the upward shift happened in one sudden jolt.

"Ten meters [33 feet] of uplift is quite astonishing," Shaw said. "Unexpectedly, our results confirm that all [of the] uplift did happen in the 365 A.D. earthquake."

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Ancient Ecoscience of the Mediterranean Basin

A good summary article about the ecological damage incurred in the Mediterranean Basin in ancient times:

"...The ancient Greeks took an essentially scientific view of their environment, and some Grecian writers saw that their land was deteriorating under human stewardship. Four centuries before Christ, Plato described Attica (the region around Athens), saying: "What now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only the bare framework of the land being left." The description is even more apt today.

The Romans, in contrast, took a strictly utilitarian view of their environment: The land was there to be exploited by Homo Sapiens . The trend toward deforestation started in Greece and spread—during the Roman Empire—from the hills of Galilee in Palestine and the Taurus Mountains of Turkey in the east, to the mountains of Spain in the west. Various features of the Roman agricultural economy greatly encouraged this process . . . and their society had no counterbalancing conservation ethic.

Both the Egyptians and Greeks were determined hunters. They forced many larger animals (such as the lions in upper Egypt and in Greece) to extinction. But the Roman Empire had a far greater destructive impact on the fauna of the ancient world than did its predecessors. Not only were animals hunted for skins, feathers, and ivory . . . but multitudes were captured for use in "games".

Huge numbers of beasts were pitted against each other (and against human beings) in lethal combats. Titus, for example, had some 9,000 wild animals slaughtered during the three months' dedication of the Colosseum, and Trajan's conquest of Dacia (modern Romania) was celebrated by games in which 11,000 beasts were killed. When one considers that tens or even hundreds of lions, leopards, rhinos, buffalos, and so on must have died—or been killed—in transport or captivity for every one that lived to entertain the citizens, the probable scale of the Roman impact on wildlife staggers the imagination.

The Romans hit hard at their environment . . . but it struck back! Deforestation, the depletion of soils, and the exhaustion of mines were all factors in the fall of Rome's Empire. The Romans didn't finish the job, however. The last great plundering of Mediterranean forest resources occurred in the late Middle Ages, when the demand for timber for fuel and shipbuilding was very great. As a result, there's very little first-growth sclerophyllous forest left in the Mediterranean basin today . . . the best examples being in the Camargue of southern France and on the peninsula of Mt. Athos in Greece (protected by the famous monastery there)..." If you enjoyed this post, never miss out on future posts by following me by email!