So heavy that people did not dare to go to the coast for 1,000 years: scientists have found evidence of the largest earthquake ever

It was always believed that the largest earthquake ever recorded was in 1960 in southern Chile in Valdivia. Its magnitude was 9.4 to 9.6 on the Richter scale. 6,000 people were killed and the tsunami swept across the Pacific Ocean. But research published in Science Advances shows a larger earthquake in the past.

The earthquake struck an area we know today in northern Chile about 3,900 years ago. Then a tectonic site raised the shoreline. What followed was a tsunami so powerful that it generated waves about twenty meters high. Then those waves traveled all the way to New Zealand as car-sized rocks swung inside.

I won’t go to the coast for 1000 years

Both earthquakes are described as “mega-quakes” or “mega-quakes”, the most powerful earthquakes in the world. It occurs when one of the Earth’s tectonic plates is pushed under the other. The two plates disrupt in this way, but the forces causing the earthquake continue to increase. Then the tension is so intense that a massive crack develops where the plates meet. This creates a massive rupture that releases energy with devastating seismic waves as a result.

“We found evidence of marine sediments and many animals that would have lived peacefully at sea before being tossed in,” said study co-author James Goff, a geologist at the University of Southampton in England. “We found them all quite high and way inland, so it couldn’t have been a storm that got them there.”

According to archaeologists, the ancient stone structures that can be excavated are also evidence of the massive earthquake. Nothing was left for the locals. Our excavations show that it was a social upheaval that followed. The tsunami caused people to move inland and it took more than 1,000 years for people to return to live on the coast. This is amazing, given that people at that time were very dependent on the sea for food. ”