Impact of Tectonic Activity on Ancient Civilizations

American historian Durant's comment says it all for this interesting book. This succinct presentation concerning the huge role tectonics plays in human development and success is exactly what is too often neglected or misrepresented in interpretations of civilizational life cycles extracted from archaeological excavations. Simply stated: tectonics ... shapes geography ... shapes culture. Eric Force presents an impressive portrayal of that relationship in a book that should be in every library that focuses on the archaeological and geological sciences. His presentation needs considerable expansion, especially on environmental/climatic factors and tectonics, and does have some issues needing thought and correction. But it is an impressive start that deserves more attention than this review can provide.The book is in four parts. Part I discusses “Great Ancient Civilizations” and the “tectonic footprints” imbedded in their setting, interaction, success, and survival. He covers the classical Hellenistic period, Iron Age, and Etruscan-Roman periods with an emphasis on volcanism; Bronze Age in the Aegean focusing on volcanism and seismicity; the Levant, Southwest Asia, and the Judeo-Christian cultures and traditions and local tectonism; then addresses cultures in India and China.Part II attempts a simple quantitative analysis of that tectonic footprint on ancient cultures and their geographic setting, endurance, and interaction. The application of rudimentary probability statistics to a dataset that is so limited it is perhaps not suitable, especially since simple inspection adequately portrays the same relationships. But it is an interesting exercise. As an example, Force has plotted (Figure 8.1) the duration (in years) of ancient complex cultures vs. approximate distance (in km) of the originating center for that culture from the closest tectonic boundary. The conclusion is that the closer the initial siting of a culture was to that boundary, the shorter its duration. Another interesting relationship appears with circum-Mediterranean centered cultures and those sited elsewhere forming a bimodal relationship. There is much to question and ponder here: width of the tectonic zones (some could be considered up to, or perhaps more than, 100 km wide, thus the semi-log plot), placement of the surface expression of the tectonic zone, the lack of understanding concerning tectonic boundaries through China and adjacent areas, and more. How did each of these affect cultural development?In Part III, the author briefly inserts time via comparisons of cultures preceding and postdating classical antiquity, to emphasize how the expansion of technology and population partially, but briefly, swamped the tectonic imprint—or so it was thought by those ancient inhabitants. And what best for a comparative illustration but contemporary cultures? Even today, we are surprised by the huge tsunami, the mega-eruption, the large magnitude earthquake. Was it considered and designed for? Did we recall the last megatectonic-induced event? Can we extrapolate from contemporary practice to ancient patterns? The discussion in this part of the book is far too brief.Part IV then emphasizes the relationship of tectonics and cultural complexity, the latter as almost a Darwinian-type spatial relationship to zones of active earth activity with focus on natural resources such as metals and water. Here, the author contends, is perhaps the primary determinant in the initiation, success, and survivability of civilizations. Much more could be said on this topic.The argument goes far beyond a presentation on dramatic and episodic catastrophic affairs such as tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and seismic events. Rather, here is an analysis of the slow grinding and shaping of the earth's crust by tectonism that sculpts landscapes, its resources, and climate, as determinates in the setting for cultural occupation and success. Most helpful is the extensive bibliography, roughly 300 references merged nicely into the text.Consider this book to be an introduction to a subject often slighted in archaeological studies. For example, a prominent and superb treatment of the cultural history of the Mediterranean region, containing nearly a thousand pages of text, includes only eleven pages mentioning tectonics and one on earthquakes. In geoarchaeology textbooks, there is usually about that same ratio of entries for tectonics to everything else. Yet those destruction deposits so prominent in every excavation are often the final chapter in a habitation story, describing far more than simple termination but the ground-truth of that end. Given the prominence tectonics has in this process, there needs to be better discussion of it in texts. Eric Force amply provides that discussion.There are some problems with the book. First of all, the few photographs are blurry. Surely the author and/or publisher can do better. The graphs and sketches are also poorly done. They are important to show the landscape features mentioned in the text, distinguish land and sea boundaries for clarity, show modern geographic features for easier orientation especially those mentioned in the text, and, most important, depict geological features that are at the heart of the presentation. Maps, again critical to the discussion, are either lacking or are roughly sketched. In terms of content, the success of cultures is also largely influenced by climate and climate change, and that needs discussion in greater depth as climate is a function of tectonics. The text often reads like a much-expanded term paper, which apparently is where it started, in need of much more thought, explanation, consideration, and expansion.The book is just under 200 pages, but it is a good first attempt at developing this theory. The thoughts are interesting, and, at the end, one wants to hear more from the author. It is a broadly-based narrative, the examples are adequate if often too generalized, but then much more detail could likely dismiss the non-scientific reader. A brief postscript is a fine note for the future of geoarchaeological research from the author's perspective following his insights and revelations that came from writing this book. It is a start for a subject hugely significant in human evolution, social and otherwise, that is too often neglected in accounts dealing with cultural histories simply because time-scales between cultural and planetary processes are so different. This book forces archaeologists to deal with that interaction and its repeated impacts.It is the recurrence of tectonic activity that serves “as a dance of culture to a ... rhythm, performed in such slow motion that individual humans can barely live long enough to hear consecutive beats.” That quote ends the book. Let us hope for an expanded and better-illustrated edition in the future

Archaeology · Geography · Presentation (obstetrics · Tectonics · Volcanism · Historical and Architectural Studies · History · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life · Water management and technologies · Geology · Paleontology