The Days the Earth Moved
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"Apocalypse" is a well-written and fascinating discussion of the role that earthquakes may have played in the Bronze Age history of the Mediterranean and the Middle East. Nur is a geophysicist who argues that archaeologists are too ready to reject earthquakes as a cause of the widespread devastation that is sometimes found at ancient sites. According to Nur, the archaeologist's preferred interpretation is usually that invading armies caused the destruction.
Nur admits that this interpretation may be right in many cases, but persuasively argues that archaeologists too often ignore evidence that the real cause of the devastation might have been an earthquake. Nur brings a geophysicist's perspective to the archaeologist's world, observing that many ancient sites (such as Mycenae) are affected by significant fault lines that pass directly through ancient ruins, sometimes visibly offsetting walls and staircases. Others ruins contain the remains of people killed thousands of years ago by collapsing walls or ceilings--the skeletons bear the telltale signs of the crushing injuries typical of earthquake victims.
Nur suggests that some ancient abandonments and migrations might have been triggered by earthquakes. For example, some of the devastation usually attributed to the mysterious Sea Peoples may have been caused by earthquakes, either because the earthquakes caused the destruction outright, or because they severely damaged fortifications and killed large numbers of people, leaving cities vulnerable to opportunistic invaders.
Archaeologists have tended to dismiss the earthquake explanation for sometimes widespread devastation in the ancient world because much of it (such as the events around 1200BC that preciptated the Greek Dark Ages) appears to have happened suddenly over an implausibly wide area for an earthquake. But Nur argues that very widepsread damage could have been caused by either a single very large earthquake, or by an "earthquake storm" (a cascade of earthquakes caused when one quake increases pressure on another fault, leading to a series of events). Both of these possibilities are fair game from the perspective of a geophysicist, and Nur urges that archaeologists should consider the possibility carefully when interpreting ancient sites.
Nur's book is an enjoyable mix of geology, geophysics, ancient history, geology, and forensics, but it also contains a warning. What happened in the Mediterranean and the Middle East in the ancient world can happen again, as it did during the Jericho Earthquake of 1927. If archaeologists and geophysicists can learn from each other, they are more likely to spot major earthquake hazards that might otherwise be overlooked.
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