China's documentary earthquake record (from c. 780 BC)
Registro sísmico documental de China (desde c. 780 a.C.)
- Date
- desde c. 780 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Wei River valley, Shaanxi, China
- Credited to
- Chinese court chroniclers and astrologers
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What was discovered
Chinese chronicles record earthquakes from one attributed to 780 BC in the Wei valley, and the dynastic histories log them regularly, giving the longest documentary earthquake catalogue in the world. Today it is used to estimate recurrence intervals for large earthquakes.
The 780 BC entry comes from the Guoyu, compiled centuries later; records are reliable and continuous only from the Han dynasty, and catalogue completeness varies greatly by region and period.
What it led to
- modern catalogues of China's historical seismicity
- seismic hazard estimates built on records spanning centuries
- the setting for the Han dynasty seismoscopes