TSUNAMI

List of historical tsunamis

This article lists notable historical tsunamis, which are sorted by the date and location that the tsunami occurred.

Because of seismic and volcanic activity associated with tectonic plate boundaries along the Pacific Ring of Fire, tsunamisoccur most frequently in the Pacific Ocean, but are a worldwide natural phenomenon. They are possible wherever large bodies of water are found, including inland lakes, where they can be caused by landslides and glacier calving. Very small tsunamis, non-destructive and undetectable without specialized equipment, occur frequently as a result of minor earthquakes and other events.

Around 1600 BCE, a tsunami caused by the eruption of Thira destroyed the Minoan civilization on Crete and related cultures in the Cyclades, as well as in areas on the Greek mainland facing the eruption, such as the Argolid.

The oldest recorded tsunami occurred in 479 BCE. It destroyed a Persian army that was attacking the town of Potidaea in Greece.^[1]

As early as 426 BCE, the Greek historian Thucydides inquired in his book History of the Peloponnesian War (3.89.1–6) about the causes of tsunamis. He argued that such events could only be explained as a consequence of ocean earthquakes, and could see no other possible causes.^[2

Prehistoric[edit]

Date	Location	Main Article	Primary Cause	Description
≈7000–6000 BCE	Lisbon, Portugal		Unknown	A series of giant boulders and cobbles have been found 14 m above mean sea level near Guincho Beach.[3]
≈6225–6170 BCE	Norwegian Sea	Storegga Slide	Landslide	The Storegga Slides occurred 100 km north-west of the Møre coast in theNorwegian Sea, causing a very large tsunami in the North Atlantic Ocean. This collapse involved an estimated 290 km length of coastal shelf, with a total volume of 3,500 km3 of debris.[4] Based on carbon dating of plant material recovered from sediment deposited by the tsunami, the latest incident occurred around ~6225–6170 BCE.[5][6] In Scotland, traces of the subsequent tsunami have been recorded, with deposited sediment being discovered in Montrose Basin, the Firth of Forth, up to 80 km inland and 4 metres above current normal tide levels.
≈1600 BCE	Santorini, Greece	Minoan eruption	Volcanic eruption	The volcanic eruption on Santorini, Greece is assumed to have caused severe damage to cities around it, most notably the Minoan civilization onCrete. A tsunami is assumed to be the factor that caused the most damage.

Before 1001 CE[edit]

Date	Location	Main Article	Primary Cause	Description
479 BCE	Potidaea, Greece	479 BCE Potidaea tsunami		The earliest recorded tsunami in history.[1] During the Persian siege of the sea town Potidaea, Greece, the Greek historian Herodotus reports how the Persian attackers who tried to exploit an unusual retreat of the water were suddenly surprised by "a great flood-tide, higher, as the people of the place say, than any one of the many that had been before". Herodotus attributes the cause of the sudden flood to the wrath of Poseidon.[7]
426 BCE	Malian Gulf, Greece	426 BC Malian Gulf tsunami		In the summer of 426 BCE, a tsunami hit the gulf between the northwest tip of Euboea and Lamia.[8] The Greek historian Thucydides (3.89.1–6) described how the tsunami and a series of earthquakes affected the ragingPeloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) and, for the first time in the history ofnatural science, associated quakes with waves in terms of cause and effect.[9]
373 BCE	Helike, Greece		Earthquake	An earthquake and a tsunami destroyed the prosperous Greek city ofHelike, 2 km away from the sea. The fate of the city, which remained permanently submerged, was often commented upon by ancient writers[10]and may have inspired the contemporary Plato to the myth of Atlantis.
60 BCE	Portugal and Galicia		Earthquake	An earthquake of intensity IX and an estimated magnitude of 6.7 caused a tsunami along the coasts of Portugal and Galicia.[11] Little more is known due to the scarcity of records from the Roman possession of the Iberian Peninsula.