Abstract
Earthquakes were so well known a phenomenon in antiquity as to inspire myths and require the creation of apotropaic cults. The stories linked to Poseidon, god of the sea, earthquakes and tsunami, had their origins during the Bronze Age, when Poseidon is the most frequently named god. In addition to literary traditions, we are able to recognize quite well in archaeological excavations traces of earthquakes and sometimes also of tsunami. The question we here investigate is how Bronze Age people formulated a practical response to these events in terms of suitably resistant architecture. And what of these techniques still can be used in modern times. In Aegean Bronze Age architecture, a series of anti-seismic practices were early developed during the more than two millennia. In Minoan palaces in particular, lighter walls were superimposed on stone ones built at basement or ground floor levels. Using vertical, horizontal and cross timbers they put up wooden frames into which stone and mudbrick elements were integrated and bonded, and over which clay and plaster were later applied. Recent research has improved our knowledge not only about the buildings and their basic structures, but also about more detailed aspects, such as the expertise of the Minoan masters in developing various types of plasters with different degrees of elasticity. This contribution will investigate how extensively these techniques are spread in the Mediterranean basin and elsewhere, both in ancient and modern times. And how they can be applied to contemporary architecture in a more sustainable way.
Highlights
ORIGIN OF ANTI-SEISMIC CONCERN AS REFLECTED IN GREEK BRONZE AGE MYTHS, MONUMENTS AND SCHOLARSHIPThe great architect Le Corbusier was used to say: ‘il n’y a pas d’homme primitif; il y a des moyens primitifs’ (There are not prehistoric men; there are prehistoric tools)
Earthquakes were so well known a phenomenon in antiquity as to inspire myths and require the creation of apotropaic cults
That already during the Greek Bronze Age, in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, Poseidon was the most named god on the clay tablets written in Linear B, a form of proto− Greek [Palaima, 2010]
Summary
ORIGIN OF ANTI-SEISMIC CONCERN AS REFLECTED IN GREEK BRONZE AGE MYTHS, MONUMENTS AND SCHOLARSHIP. They had thinking processes, emotions and re− actions the equal of our own They solved practical problems too – but with a different set of materials – but every bit as empirically as us. During the Greek Bronze Age, in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC, Poseidon was the most named god on the clay tablets written in Linear B, a form of proto− Greek [Palaima, 2010] He was among the few divinities thereon, whose names continued into the Classical pe− riod [Rougemont, 2005]. The earliest surviving record, he has the epithet of e−ne−si−da−o−ne, ‘Earth−shaker' – just as in Classical and later times This word appears in two very fragmentary tablets from Knossos [DMic 219. Even in 1948, when the great archaeologist Schaeffer interpreted numerous destruction layers in the Near East – datable between 1225 and 1175 BC and usually attributed to hu− man actions, as the result of earthquakes, he was highly
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