Archaeologists have found traces of a 9.5-magnitude mega earthquake that caused an 8,000-kilometer-long tsunami. This happened about 3,800 years ago in what is now northern Chile. The tsunami that followed was so strong that the waves rose to a height of 20 meters. The tsunami has reached the shores New Zeland It threw huge boulders the size of a car hundreds of kilometers inland.

The strongest event ever recorded was the 1960 earthquake in Valdivia. happened in the south Chile and differed in size from 9.4 to 9.6 points. As a result, up to 6,000 people died, and tsunamis swept the Pacific Ocean. The fault that caused the earthquake in Valdivia was huge – its length reached 800 km. But according to a study published in Science Advances in April, the recently discovered mega-quake was even larger as it was caused by a fault nearly 1,000 km long.

Earthquakes and tsunamis are among the most disastrous events to affect human societies. These are the moments when people’s adaptation to the environment is questioned and the society shows its ability to recover. Coastal settlements are particularly vulnerable to such natural disasters.

The first inhabitants of the arid coastal Atacama Desert in northern Chile developed resilience strategies that allowed them to adapt effectively to extreme conditions over the course of 12,000 years, including the effects of powerful earthquakes and tsunamis. A new study provides geoarchaeological evidence of a major tsunami earthquake that severely impacted prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities. Occurring about 3,800 years ago, it caused social upheaval but also initiated sustainable survival strategies along the coast.

The ancient earthquake was the so-called mega-quake earthquake – the strongest type of earthquake in the world. They are observed when one of the tectonic plates pushes or falls under the other. The two plates snap into each other, but the forces that cause them to collide increase. As a result, such a high voltage accumulates that point The contact between the plates is broken, creating a huge void and releasing energy in the form of destructive seismic waves.

Archaeologists have found evidence of a giant earthquake in marine and coastal objects: sediments (rocks, pebbles and sand), sea stones, seashells – transported far to land in the desert Atacama . A simple storm couldn’t do that.

Archaeologists used radiocarbon dating to better understand the power behind the tracks. It helped to find that the discovered coastal material got there about 3800 years ago.

Additional evidence has emerged in the form of ancient stone structures excavated by archaeologists. They were stone walls built by humans and were beneath the sediments described above, and the location of some suggested they were toppled by powerful tsunami waves.

Overall, archaeological studies have shown that when communities move inland beyond the reach of the tsunami, great social upheaval follows the earthquake. It took more than 1,000 years for humans to return to live on the coast. Even that is strange, because before that they relied so heavily on the ocean as a food source.

Detection of the strongest earthquake and tsunami in Turkey Southern Hemisphere More research will help better inform scientists about the potential dangers of future earthquakes.