BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:icalendar-ruby CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:Earthquakes and Archaeology: The Catastrophic End of the Bronz e Age @ 1200BC X-WR-TIMEZONE:Eastern Time (US & Canada) BEGIN:VEVENT DTSTAMP:20261006T024718Z UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_3227870 DTSTART:20180411T200000Z DTEND:20180411T210000Z DESCRIPTION:Speaker: Amos Nur (Stanford)\n\n“Civilization exists by geolo gical consent\, subject to change without notice” \n\nWill Durant\, 1885 -1981\n\nEarthquakes have traditionally and often vehemently been rejected (Toynbee\, 1939: Ambraseys\, 1971) as an important agent in past societal collapses and destructions. In this talk I show however that from a geoph ysics point of view\, and especially our current knowledge of earthquake g eography and plate tectonics\, that this rejection is unwarranted and even a bit surprising given some great archaeological puzzles we face\, e.g.\, \n\nWhy are there so many ruins around the Mediterranean basin? Why are th ere so many levels of destruction in so many archaeological sites (e.g.\, Knossos-10\, Jericho-22\, Armageddon-32\, Troy-45)? The inexplicable natur e of regional destructions and system collapses.\n\nOne of the greatest co llapses we know of in history is the catastrophic end of the Bronze Age ca . 1200 BC in the Eastern Mediterranean and the near East involving not onl y political and societal collapses but also the physical destruction of ma jor capital cities such as Mycenae\, Hatusas\, Ugarit and Troy\, and impor tant sites such as Armageddon and Jericho.\n\nHere I show how a 50 year “earthquake storm” could have unzipped the plate boundaries in the Aeg ean and Eastern Mediterranean around 1225-1175 BC. This storm could have c ontributed to a “systems collapse” (Renfrew\, 1981\, 1987\; Drews\, 19 93) that defines the end of the Late Bronze Age.\n\nHere are some possible lessons:\n\nFor archaeology and history: Societal collapses or major chan ges by past large earthquakes did happen and may be more common than we co uld have assumed.\n\nFor earthquake physics: Clustering of large earthquak es in time and space may be quite common\, especially in regions where pla te configuration are complex.\n\n\n\nDepiction of the prophesized earthqua ke collapse during the Battle of the Apocalypse in Armageddon\, accord ing to ‘The Revelation of Saint John the Divine’.\n\nAbout the Speaker \n\nAmos Nur is widely considered one of the world’s top academic author ities on rock physics. He applies rock physics results to the understandin g of tectonophysical processes in the Earth’s crust and lithosphere\, a major thrust of which is the role of fluids in crustal processes and in en ergy resources. Nur pioneered the use of seismic velocity measurements to characterize the changing state of oil and gas reservoirs as the volume of fluid in the rock changed during pumping\; the process has come to be kno wn as “four-dimensional” seismic monitoring. He has published over 240 papers and guided dozens of doctoral and master’s candidates. Nur was o n the Stanford faculty from 1970 until his retirement in 2008 and he remai ns affiliated with the school as professor emeritus. After his retirement\ , Nur joined Ingrain\, a company he helped found in 2007\, and where he no w is Chief Technology Officer.\n\nAbout this Series\n\nWeekly talks given by leading thinkers in the areas of geology\, geophysics\, geobiology\, ge ochemistry\, atmospheric science\, oceanography\, climatology\, and planet ary science. Lectures take place on Wednesdays from 3:45pm in MIT Building 54 room 915\, unless otherwise noted. GEO:42.360158;-71.089183 LOCATION:Building 54\, 915/923 SUMMARY:Earthquakes and Archaeology: The Catastrophic End of the Bronze Age @ 1200BC URL;VALUE=URI:https://calendar.mit.edu/event/department-lecture-amos-nur-st anford CATEGORIES:Conferences/Seminars/Lectures END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR