Invitation

Justine Walter
Department of Ancient Studies University of Leipzig

will give a talk on

"震，動也。地，不震者也; 震，故謹而日之也。 "
"Seismic disturbance and early Chinese history"

Date: Thursday, 07 July 2016 at 1:30 pm
Place: seminar room, first floor (H6/202), Helmholtzstraße 6, Potsdam

All interested are invited.

Abstract:

The history of earthquakes in China is one of superlatives: The 1556 Shaanxi Earthquake that caused more than 800,000 casualties is held to be the deadliest ever recorded, the seismoscop presented to the Chinese court by Zhang Heng in 132 AD was the world’s first apparatus of this kind and the 24 Dynastic Chronicles that cover a period of almost 3,000 years and contain thousands of earthquake depictions are often considered as the most extensive, continuous record of past earthquakes known so far. This abundance of earthquake depictions provides rich data not only for catalogues of historical earthquakes in “one of the world’s greatest areas of seismic disturbance”[1], as Joseph Needham called China in his influential work Science and Civilisation in China. They are also an interesting topic for historians of China’s intellectual and political history because, unlike modern seismological studies, these early observations did not focus on the features of the earthquakes themselves, but on their implications for society. As it was generally believed that any natural phenomenon was causally linked to developments in the human sphere, court scientists were predominantly concerned with finding out who or what had caused the earthquake in order to be able to correct this situation and prevent future shocks. In many cases, this triggered public debates about the state of affairs and discussions about previously unquestioned assumptions. Consequently, Needham’s statement – intentionally or not – also alludes to the impact of earthquakes on the course of Chinese history: They disturbed the political order and provoked reforms. The presentation will explore these surviving depictions of earthquakes from early Chinese history (i.e. the centuries before the end of the Later Han Dynasty in 220 AD), a period that has so far attracted little attention by historical earthquake research. It will be based on the following questions: How were earthquakes documented? How were they interpreted? Which of the interpretations was dominant, and why so? What practical coping measures resulted from these interpretations? Were they successful?

[1] Needham, J.: Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 3: Mathematics and the sciences of the heavens and the earth. Cambridge 1992, p. 624.