Talk:365 Crete earthquake

Timing of the uplift

The article currently states that "a recent reassessment of radiocarbon data indicates that the uplift most probably took place at a later date" referring to Kelly 2004. This directly contradicts many of the other sources, especially Stiros 2001, 2010 and Shaw et al. 2008. I don't have access to the Kelly paper, so it would good if someone who does could summarise the arguments so that this part of the article can address these differences in opinion. Mikenorton (talk) 17:09, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

From another article by Kelly in 2008 page 90 it's clear that he was basing this solely on the Price et al. 2002 paper, which has now been superseded by a paper by Shaw et al. in 2010 [1] (including one of the authors of the Price et al. 2002 paper), explaining about problems with radiocarbon dating lithophaga molluscs, as they incorporate "dead carbon" from the limestone that they bore into. I'm going to remove the "later date" part and add the later Shaw et al. paper as a source confirming that the uplift was associated with the 365 earthquake. Mikenorton (talk) 20:23, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

In fact the Shaw et al. 2008 paper already used is clear enough, so I've just removed the sentence. Mikenorton (talk) 21:04, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

The most important event in late antiquity

Might we mention that every single city in North Africa was devastated? That Greco-Roman civilization never recovered from this? While the exact number will never be known, MILLIONS of people were killed, after all.Ericl (talk) 22:24, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Keep in mind that this was the fourth century. It was indeed a catastrophe of epic proportions, but you have to remember that this earthquake occurred during an era cluttered with catastrophes of epic proportions.

You are engaging in pure speculation. "Every single city" is an exaggeration, as is a death toll of "millions." Greco-Roman civilization in the East, on the contrary, peaked during the reign of Justinian. 200 years later, the East-Roman/Byzantine empire was thriving.HammerFilmFan (talk) 02:12, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Not in North Africa, it wasn’t. The downtown area of Alexandria fell into the sea, Cyrene and Leptus Magna never recovered and then the Vandals came. There’s almost nothing after 365. Arglebargle79 (talk) 19:22, 15 February 2018 (UTC)

That contradicts everything I've read elsewhere. Roman civilisation began to slowly decline long before the middle of the fourth century, definitely starting with the Crisis of the Third Century and the concurrent gradual decline of economy and philosophy, literature, art and technology, industry, trade and production throughout the third century, with the rise of Christianity in the early fourth century at least not helping matters (while pagans were increasingly given to mysticism, Christians tended to be outright hostile to pagan philosophy, especially natural philosophy, which they denounced as godless and attacked as depraved), and on the other hand, the Roman Empire was still highly developed in the late fourth century, and especially North Africa, which was considerably less hit by the upheavals elsewhere in the Empire, highly urbanised, and agriculturally highly productive. Roman Egypt and specifically Alexandria was fantastically wealthy, populous and developed even in Late Antiquity, with personalities like Theon of Alexandria and Hypatia active at and after the time in question, and the province of Africa also still flourishing around 400 and well into the fifth century, down to the Vandal invasion and even beyond, compare History of North Africa § Classical period and de:Africa. Interestingly, pagan Egyptian culture also lingered on – and may actually have been rather vigorous – for decades after 365, until Theodosius closed the pagan temples in 391, and even into the fifth century.

In sum, there seems to me to be very little evidence of the 365 event having an outsized impact on Roman North Africa. The real historical situation is considerably more complicated, and I agree essentially with HammerFilmFan that the Greek East, North Africa and Egypt in particular did not suddenly fall into decline in the late fourth century, but thrived well into the sixth century, with no particular (let alone striking) unprecedented signs of decline (that were not already present in the early to mid-fourth century) in North Africa down to the seventh century and the Arabic conquest. Similarly, the climate events of the 530s didn't have an obvious long-term impact, either. The same picture emerges in modern history, which is full of comparable natural disasters, epidemics and also wars, including in the late medieval period and the Renaissance, which are broadly comparable to Greco-Roman civilisation in Late Antiquity. It seems clear that internal social developments are far more important in the long term than natural disasters, as civilisations display remarkable resilience (compare also Did the Environment Kill Rome? on the one hand, and on the other hand the graphs in this article, which show evident economic decline throughout the Mediterranean already around 300, and definitely starting well before the middle of the fourth century). It typically does not only take long-term environmental disasters (such as desertification and soil degradation in North Africa), but also social factors – basically a combination of factors to result in a "perfect storm" – to bring down an entire civilisation; short-term disasters, however devastating, generally do not suffice. All that the 365 event can have done is to accelerate the drawn-out collapse of an already decaying civilisation. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 14:53, 12 September 2021 (UTC)

The new (2020) article by Stiros (linked in "Further reading") also concludes that the damage was minor. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:05, 31 October 2021 (UTC)

Literary accounts

The entry for this event in the List of historical tsunamis included a (presumably translated) excerpt. If this quote belongs anywhere, it is in this main article, not a summary list. Any opinions on whether the addition below should be included in this article?

The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (Res Gestae 26.10.15–19) described the typical sequence of tsunami events, including an earthquake, the sudden retreat of the sea, and a subsequent gigantic wave.

Slightly after daybreak, and heralded by a thick succession of fiercely shaken thunderbolts, the solidity of the whole earth was made to shake and shudder, and the sea was driven away, its waves were rolled back, and it disappeared, so that the abyss of the depths was uncovered and many-shaped varieties of sea-creatures were seen stuck in the slime; the great wastes of those valleys and mountains, which the very creation had dismissed beneath the vast whirlpools, at that moment, as it was given to be believed, looked up at the sun's rays. Many ships, then, were stranded as if on dry land, and people wandered at will about the paltry remains of the waters to collect fish and the like in their hands; then the roaring sea as if insulted by its repulse rises back in turn, and through the teeming shoals dashed itself violently on islands and extensive tracts of the mainland, and flattened innumerable buildings in towns or wherever they were found. Thus in the raging conflict of the elements, the face of the earth was changed to reveal wondrous sights. For the mass of waters returning when least expected killed many thousands by drowning, and with the tides whipped up to a height as they rushed back, some ships, after the anger of the watery element had grown old, were seen to have sunk, and the bodies of people killed in shipwrecks lay there, faces up or down. Other huge ships, thrust out by the mad blasts, perched on the roofs of houses, as happened at Alexandria, and others were hurled nearly two miles from the shore, like the Laconian vessel near the town of Methone which I saw when I passed by, yawning apart from long decay.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Elriana (talk • contribs) 20:42, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

References

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on 365 Crete earthquake. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

• Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070325085617/http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/today/his_07_21.php to http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/today/his_07_21.php

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Y An editor has reviewed this edit and fixed any errors that were found.

• If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
• If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 18:20, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

How do they know this happened?

How do they know this happened? It was years ago. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.57.1.171 (talk) 17:28, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

We believe it happened based on geological, literary, and archaeological evidence, some of which is still visible to this day. Read the rest of the article, and its sources, to learn more. MPS1992 (talk) 23:10, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Tsunami

The effects on Neapolis have been studied by archaeologists: https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/woodstock-archaeology/ Kdammers (talk) 09:37, 18 November 2019 (UTC)