Fuentes históricas y geológicas de los terremotos antiguos en la Península Ibérica

• Pablo G. Silva Barroso ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de Salamanca

     Universidad de Salamanca

     Salamanca, España

     
• Localización: Revista de la Sociedad Geológica de España, ISSN 0214-2708, Vol. 32, Nº. 2, 2019, págs. 43-64
• Idioma: español
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Historical and geological sources for ancient earthquakes in the Iberian Peninsula
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• Resumen
  • español

    Se realiza una revisión crítica y se contrasta la cantidad y calidad de los datos que ofrecen las fuentes documentales históricas y geológicas sobre terremotos antiguos en la Península ibérica. Recientes revisiones críticas del catálogo de terremotos históricos en la península publicado en 2002 por el Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN) evidencian una manifiesta falta de credibilidad de las fuentes históricas de los terremotos más antiguos. De hecho tras la reciente revisión del catálogo on-line del IGN en el año 2017, han desaparecido todos los terremotos anteriores a nuestra era y de los ocurridos antes del año 1000 a.C. solo ha quedado un terremoto (Sagunto, 348 a.C.) y aquellos documentados por fuentes documentales árabes posteriores al año 800 d.C. La causa que esgrimen tales revisiones es que prácticamente todas las referencias a terremotos antiguos beben fundamentalmente de la obra Crónica General de España de Florian de Ocampo (1543) que no cita explícitamente las fuentes en que se basa o se consideran espurias. Este trabajo explora las fuentes documentales anteriores y posteriores a la obra de Ocampo y contrasta los escasos datos históricos existentes con la creciente cantidad de datos geológicos y arqueológicos que avalan la ocurrencia de terremotos antiguos durante época romana y medieval. Para ilustrar el estado de la cuestión se analizan diferentes casos de terremotos antiguos e históricos ocurridos en la península.

  • English

    A critical review on the quality and quantity of historical and geological sources for ancient earthquakes in Spain is done. Recent critical reviews of the macroseismic catalogue for historical earthquakes of the Spanish National Geographic Institute (IGN; 2002) evidence a fragile reliability on the historical sources for the most ancient earthquakes in the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, after these criticisms the most recent review of the on-line IGN Spanish Catalogue during the year 2017, totally removed all the earthquakes occurred “Before the Common Era” (BCE) and most of those reported during de first millennia (< 1000 CE). For this last time-span only the Sagunto Earthquake (348 CE) and those documented by Arabic sources in the Cordoba Caliphate after 800 CE remained (9 events). The reasons for this removal is that most of the ancient earthquakes catalogued in Spain are originally documented in Crónica general de España written by the historian Florian de Ocampo in 1543, during the kingdom of Carlos I of Spain, who did not refer to older historic documents. However, the research developed for this paper clearly indicates that the work of Ocampo is based on the previous chronicles, such as Estoria de España written by the King of Castilla Alphonso X in c. 1280 CE, in turn based on a series of medieval chronicles (881–1236 CE) and on Greco-Roman writers. On the other hand, the seismic history of Spain with only 9 events cataloged before 1000 CE strongly contrast with the growing amount of geological and archaeological data evidencing strong seismic events during the antiquity and roman times. To contrast these different data-sources, ancient key events of the Spanish Catalogue are discussed here, such those occurred in the Pyrenees (880 and 500 BCE), the earthquake-tsunami event in the gulf of Cádiz in 218 BCE) and two earthquakes occurred during the end of the first millennium in Córdoba (881 CE) and northwest of the Iberian Peninsula (939 CE). The virtual absence of earthquakes in Spain before 1000 CE provide an unreal macroseismic scenario for the antiquity. This nearly aseismic scenario contrasts with the about 150 earthquakes (felt) per year catalogued for the period 1500–1800 CE, but also with the growing number of geoarchaeological data on ancient earthquakes in Spain published during the last years.