http://www.drgeorgepc.com/Tsunami325BCI ... ander.html
The page is by George Pararas-Carayannis, and is quite interesting. It postulates that the tsunami may have been one of the contributing factors of the fleet not keeping up with Alexander during his march through the desert back to Babylon.
This is the first I've heard of this directly.
What does anyone else think?
ALEXANDER THE GREAT - IMPACT OF THE 325 BC TSUNAMI
Moderator: pothos moderators
-
rjones2818
- Pezhetairos (foot soldier)
- Posts: 80
- Joined: Fri Jan 27, 2006 10:26 am
Re: ALEXANDER THE GREAT - IMPACT OF THE 325 BC TSUNAMI
I have to say that I was not convinced by the article in the slightest. First of all, there is no record in the Greek/Roman sources, as "Dr George" himself admits. So he spends a third of the article describing the fleet's progress sans tsunami. He presents not a single source reference from non-Western sources, which are the sources that are supposed to confirm that the earthquake took place.rjones2818 wrote:http://www.drgeorgepc.com/Tsunami325BCI ... ander.html
The page is by George Pararas-Carayannis, and is quite interesting. It postulates that the tsunami may have been one of the contributing factors of the fleet not keeping up with Alexander during his march through the desert back to Babylon.
This is the first I've heard of this directly.
What does anyone else think?
The whole thing is very suspect and very Fortean Times, in my opinion.
Happy to believe that it all happened, but I need a more convincing argument (with fewer spelling and grammatical mistakes, as well - my confidence was hardly improved. Apparently Alexander fought a few "squirmishes" ...).
ATB
A squirmish is a little fight where you don't feel quite comfortable with what you're doing.
But seriously -- it's an interesting premise, but I agree with Marcus in that without a lot more cites, and a detailed laying-out of the logic that supposedly dates the tsunami in Oct/Nov 325, it's not convincing.
But something I'd like to add about tsunamis, that I found out by surfing around after the terrible disaster of Dec. 26 2004: the author speculates that if the fleet had been at sea when the tsunami hit, it would have been totally destroyed. Tsunamis, however, are not at all like the waves from storms, and quite the opposite is the case. They are not destructive at all in deep water because they don't peak; essentially they just pass under like huge swells, so that if you're in a boat you just go up for a while and then down for a while, and without specialized instruments, you won't even notice. It's when tsunamis hit shallow water, which narrows and therefore concentrates their force, and then land, which makes them break and turn into roiling maelstroms of water that grind up everything in their path, that the destruction happens.
So if a tsunami did hit the fleet, they likely would not even have noticed if they were far out. If they were a little way out they might have saved themselves by turning into the waves as demonstrated in this video: http://www.asiantsunamivideos.com/ -- "Location: Khao Lak, Thailand ; Video Description: Amateur camcorder footage of the 2004 tsunami disaster shot by a German tourist." (It's down a few videos, and the relevant part of the video is towards the end, just before the German tourist finally figures out he'd better quit shooting and high-tail it.) If they were beached -- total destruction, if the tsunami was a big one, as the other videos on this site demonstrate well.
So either there was no tsunami when the fleet went through, or they dodged the bullet -- were far enough out that the ships weren't affected -- and found no destruction of human settlements when they came into shore due to the absence of human settlement in the area. Else surely it would show up in the sources.
Warmly,
Karen
But seriously -- it's an interesting premise, but I agree with Marcus in that without a lot more cites, and a detailed laying-out of the logic that supposedly dates the tsunami in Oct/Nov 325, it's not convincing.
But something I'd like to add about tsunamis, that I found out by surfing around after the terrible disaster of Dec. 26 2004: the author speculates that if the fleet had been at sea when the tsunami hit, it would have been totally destroyed. Tsunamis, however, are not at all like the waves from storms, and quite the opposite is the case. They are not destructive at all in deep water because they don't peak; essentially they just pass under like huge swells, so that if you're in a boat you just go up for a while and then down for a while, and without specialized instruments, you won't even notice. It's when tsunamis hit shallow water, which narrows and therefore concentrates their force, and then land, which makes them break and turn into roiling maelstroms of water that grind up everything in their path, that the destruction happens.
So if a tsunami did hit the fleet, they likely would not even have noticed if they were far out. If they were a little way out they might have saved themselves by turning into the waves as demonstrated in this video: http://www.asiantsunamivideos.com/ -- "Location: Khao Lak, Thailand ; Video Description: Amateur camcorder footage of the 2004 tsunami disaster shot by a German tourist." (It's down a few videos, and the relevant part of the video is towards the end, just before the German tourist finally figures out he'd better quit shooting and high-tail it.) If they were beached -- total destruction, if the tsunami was a big one, as the other videos on this site demonstrate well.
So either there was no tsunami when the fleet went through, or they dodged the bullet -- were far enough out that the ships weren't affected -- and found no destruction of human settlements when they came into shore due to the absence of human settlement in the area. Else surely it would show up in the sources.
Warmly,
Karen
-
athenas owl
- Hetairos (companion)
- Posts: 401
- Joined: Tue Apr 25, 2006 5:07 am
- Location: US
I am familiar with this site. Not sure I agree at all but it reminds me of the following, though it would have been before Oct/Nov 325.
Before I ever saw it, i always was struck by the description of Alexander's ships being stranded by the very large tides as he neared the ocean. In many ways it sounded like a description of a tsunami. Not saying it was, but in some ways very like one (or rather several as a tsunami is wont to do). The Indus is at this time (i am aware that it had a different mouth at the time) is tidal for nearly 60 miles up river, so the idea that Alexander was not aware of tides before the groundings occurred seems illogical to me.
But then tides are part of my daily existence. I can not imagine that Alexander and his captains did not notice the daily ebb and surge of the river as they traveled down it. Increasing in strength the closer they got to the mouth.
I live in an area that has experienced tsunamis. When i was a child, Crescent City, California was destroyed by the Good Friday Earthquake in Alaska...rather by the resultant tsunami...and much of the coast here experienced damage as well, and some fatalities. Friends who lived in Kodaik at the time talk about it from their perspective, and the regression and progressioin of the waters went on repeatedly for sometime, it wasn't an instant event, over quickly.
Karen, you are correct. I literally live next door to a tsunami evacuation sign. (Choosing to live high above the water comes from experience!). When we've had tsunami warnings, the husband has taken the boat offshore for exactly that reason (to prevent it from bei9ng smashed) while I'd grab the kidlets and head for even higher ground. (Hint: stay off the main highways..know your back roads, or in our case the logging roads. Can you tell we think about this a lot?)
I've lately been trying to find more information about the Makran and the tectonics there.
The coastline has certainly altered since then and most definitely in the last 3000 years, the sea receding many miles in some places.
How different was the coast when Alexander passed through? Engels has him going through (vis Stein if memory serves) LasBela and then over through the Kech River valley. Which actually seems like the "road" straight to Pura. As far as I can tell, there are no dunes there around Turbat that would have so altered the landscape as to be "lost" and forcing ATG to the coast at that time. Though earlier, there are dune scapes in the Arawan area.
If he had made it to Turbat, it seems as though he would have continued on the "established" route. Again, at least now, Turbat's area has no dunes that could cause one to lose sight of direction.
Though around Kech/Turbat, there are flood zones so perhaps that is where the great flash flood occured. A flood plain large enough for thousands to be camped out. The size of the camp must have been at least a few sq. km.
Does anyone have any link or recommendation for more current ideas on ATG's route through the Makran/Gedrosian?
And in my travels I have come across refernces to 'Nearchus the Cretan" by Badian. Has anyone read this article? Once again, the curse of JSTOR has prevented me from easily accessing it via my comp.
Before I ever saw it, i always was struck by the description of Alexander's ships being stranded by the very large tides as he neared the ocean. In many ways it sounded like a description of a tsunami. Not saying it was, but in some ways very like one (or rather several as a tsunami is wont to do). The Indus is at this time (i am aware that it had a different mouth at the time) is tidal for nearly 60 miles up river, so the idea that Alexander was not aware of tides before the groundings occurred seems illogical to me.
But then tides are part of my daily existence. I can not imagine that Alexander and his captains did not notice the daily ebb and surge of the river as they traveled down it. Increasing in strength the closer they got to the mouth.
I live in an area that has experienced tsunamis. When i was a child, Crescent City, California was destroyed by the Good Friday Earthquake in Alaska...rather by the resultant tsunami...and much of the coast here experienced damage as well, and some fatalities. Friends who lived in Kodaik at the time talk about it from their perspective, and the regression and progressioin of the waters went on repeatedly for sometime, it wasn't an instant event, over quickly.
Karen, you are correct. I literally live next door to a tsunami evacuation sign. (Choosing to live high above the water comes from experience!). When we've had tsunami warnings, the husband has taken the boat offshore for exactly that reason (to prevent it from bei9ng smashed) while I'd grab the kidlets and head for even higher ground. (Hint: stay off the main highways..know your back roads, or in our case the logging roads. Can you tell we think about this a lot?)
I've lately been trying to find more information about the Makran and the tectonics there.
The coastline has certainly altered since then and most definitely in the last 3000 years, the sea receding many miles in some places.
How different was the coast when Alexander passed through? Engels has him going through (vis Stein if memory serves) LasBela and then over through the Kech River valley. Which actually seems like the "road" straight to Pura. As far as I can tell, there are no dunes there around Turbat that would have so altered the landscape as to be "lost" and forcing ATG to the coast at that time. Though earlier, there are dune scapes in the Arawan area.
If he had made it to Turbat, it seems as though he would have continued on the "established" route. Again, at least now, Turbat's area has no dunes that could cause one to lose sight of direction.
Though around Kech/Turbat, there are flood zones so perhaps that is where the great flash flood occured. A flood plain large enough for thousands to be camped out. The size of the camp must have been at least a few sq. km.
Does anyone have any link or recommendation for more current ideas on ATG's route through the Makran/Gedrosian?
And in my travels I have come across refernces to 'Nearchus the Cretan" by Badian. Has anyone read this article? Once again, the curse of JSTOR has prevented me from easily accessing it via my comp.
Last edited by athenas owl on Fri Dec 21, 2007 6:29 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-
jasonxx
Haven't read it, but it was included in Studies in Greek Historians (Yale Classical Studies 1975). You can buy an "acceptable" used copy via the Amazon link for $8.00 plus shipping, but I don't know anything about the rest of the articles in the book to say if it would be worth even this relatively small expense. I.e., I imagine scholarship on various other ancient historians has changed somewhat since 1975.athenas owl wrote:And in my travels I have come across refernces to 'Nearchus the Cretan" by Badian. Has anyone read this article? Once again, the curse of JSTOR has prevented me from easily accessing it via my comp.
Oh, and see this link for evidence that the Badian article is included in the book.
Best regards,
Amyntoros
Pothos Lunch Room Monitor
Pothos Lunch Room Monitor
This thread got me surfing about tsunamis again (no pun intended). When I wrote that if you're far out at sea, you just go up for a while and then down for a while, it wasn't entirely accurate, as it sounded like you're going a long way up and then a long way down. In deep water, even major tsunamis actually have a small surface amplitude -- just a few feet.
So that raises the question -- if they're only a few feet high when they start, and they don't build (unlike wind-caused waves), why are they so devastating on shore? It's because of a crucial difference. Wind-caused waves, the kind we are used to, are caused by a surface influence, and so they don't really affect the water much deeper than the trough. If you are swimming in a two-foot chop and you dive ten feet down, you'll notice the water is perfectly still.
Tsunamis, on the other hand, are caused by something either at the bottom or reaching the bottom (in the case of a landslide) and therefore extend all the way from surface to bottom. That's a huge amount of water -- I read somewhere yesterday that the sea-bottom earthquake of Dec 26, 2004 displaced seven cubic miles of water. The waves also travel very fast in deep water -- several hundred kilometers per hour, which was how they made it to Banda Aceh in 15 minutes, India in two hours and Africa in seven. In shallower water, this tremendous energy is forced upwards, so they lose speed but gain height.
Surfing around, I find that the earliest recorded tsunami was recounted by Herodotus as taking place in 479 BCE at Potidea -- saving the citizens from Persian invaders. The Persians had taken advantage of a suddenly-dry sea bottom (receding waters are often the first effect of a tsunami) to storm the city's sea wall, unaware -- like many intrigued tourists in Indonesia and Thailand exploring an exposed sea bottom -- that the sea would come crashing back with a vengeance.
Author Benjamin Franklin Howell cites another author who catalogued 141 tsunamis in the Eastern Mediterranean starting in the second millennium BCE, which suggests to me that the Greeks might have been familiar with them; Mary Renault seemed to think so when she wrote The King Must Die, in which she portrays Theseus, who considers himself a son of Poseidon "Earth-shaker," as having a psychic ability to sense impending earthquakes. I haven't read it for a while but as I recall, he has a clue about tsunamis. The great eruption that blew apart Santorini, aka Thera, and destroyed the Minoan civilization (or so it is theorized) has a starring role in the book also. It's hard to imagine that the Greeks and thus Alexander didn't have knowledge, at the very least folklore, about tsunamis.
Even though I was way ahead of myself, I wrote this scene for my Alexander novel, and had fun with it. ("This [local] fellow wasn’t used to schooling his expressions; clear as day on his face was the thought, ‘You are a mighty king, all in gold and silver with so many ships and so huge an army, and you don’t know about this?’ ") Just as people long mistook tsunamis for "tidal waves," I have Alexander first assume, when he finds out the sea has dropped... that it's a tsunami
A fond wave to all,
Karen
So that raises the question -- if they're only a few feet high when they start, and they don't build (unlike wind-caused waves), why are they so devastating on shore? It's because of a crucial difference. Wind-caused waves, the kind we are used to, are caused by a surface influence, and so they don't really affect the water much deeper than the trough. If you are swimming in a two-foot chop and you dive ten feet down, you'll notice the water is perfectly still.
Tsunamis, on the other hand, are caused by something either at the bottom or reaching the bottom (in the case of a landslide) and therefore extend all the way from surface to bottom. That's a huge amount of water -- I read somewhere yesterday that the sea-bottom earthquake of Dec 26, 2004 displaced seven cubic miles of water. The waves also travel very fast in deep water -- several hundred kilometers per hour, which was how they made it to Banda Aceh in 15 minutes, India in two hours and Africa in seven. In shallower water, this tremendous energy is forced upwards, so they lose speed but gain height.
Surfing around, I find that the earliest recorded tsunami was recounted by Herodotus as taking place in 479 BCE at Potidea -- saving the citizens from Persian invaders. The Persians had taken advantage of a suddenly-dry sea bottom (receding waters are often the first effect of a tsunami) to storm the city's sea wall, unaware -- like many intrigued tourists in Indonesia and Thailand exploring an exposed sea bottom -- that the sea would come crashing back with a vengeance.
Author Benjamin Franklin Howell cites another author who catalogued 141 tsunamis in the Eastern Mediterranean starting in the second millennium BCE, which suggests to me that the Greeks might have been familiar with them; Mary Renault seemed to think so when she wrote The King Must Die, in which she portrays Theseus, who considers himself a son of Poseidon "Earth-shaker," as having a psychic ability to sense impending earthquakes. I haven't read it for a while but as I recall, he has a clue about tsunamis. The great eruption that blew apart Santorini, aka Thera, and destroyed the Minoan civilization (or so it is theorized) has a starring role in the book also. It's hard to imagine that the Greeks and thus Alexander didn't have knowledge, at the very least folklore, about tsunamis.
Couple of theories: the delta wasn't as big then, so the tidal effect didn't extend 60 miles upriver; and, the fleet travelled fast enough downriver that they didn't beach within the tidal zone until they were in the ocean proper. A trireme apparently could move at 6 knots, which is slightly more than six miles per hour, so that at full speed, and especially going downstream, the fleet could have made even 60 miles in ten hours. I doubt Alexander, eager to see Ocean for the first time in his life, would have had the fleet travelling at anything less than max.Athena's Owl wrote:The Indus is at this time (i am aware that it had a different mouth at the time) is tidal for nearly 60 miles up river, so the idea that Alexander was not aware of tides before the groundings occurred seems illogical to me. But then tides are part of my daily existence. I can not imagine that Alexander and his captains did not notice the daily ebb and surge of the river as they traveled down it. Increasing in strength the closer they got to the mouth.
Even though I was way ahead of myself, I wrote this scene for my Alexander novel, and had fun with it. ("This [local] fellow wasn’t used to schooling his expressions; clear as day on his face was the thought, ‘You are a mighty king, all in gold and silver with so many ships and so huge an army, and you don’t know about this?’ ") Just as people long mistook tsunamis for "tidal waves," I have Alexander first assume, when he finds out the sea has dropped... that it's a tsunami
A fond wave to all,
Karen