Geology wasn’t as developed as today in the past. Thus many earthquake events were missed or misunderstood in the ancient period. After the earthquakes in the sea basins, tsunami is the most important threat for the land. Anatolian coasts don’t have privilege,thus we can come across some tsunami cases on the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts.
Traces of ancient tsunamis were discovered on Turkish coasts. Aegean coasts are the most affected zones from the eruptions and tsunamis. We all know Thera eruption which caused one of the biggest tsunami events in history. After the eruption, tsunami waves extended to Egypt and eastern Mediterranean coasts. Today we can see the cracks and erosions that were the results of a giant tsunami in the region.
Even inner regions of our coasts hide many hints on giant tsunami in the history. It is the reality that Aegean zone (Turkey and Greece) is one of the dynamic earthquake lines in the earth. It was the same in the past. Even today Turkey and Greece may face giant earthquakes so it means that tsunamis will form. We have an advantage of science at present so we can guess the tsunami earlier. The ancient public didn’t have this advantage. İzmir region is one of the dynamic zones of Turkey. The archeaological excavations prove us that Smyrna and the region (Old İzmir) faced tsunami in a time.
The archeaological excavations will show us many hints on tsunami and human civilization.
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