The Ancient Architecture that Defies Earthquakes
Stone buildings in northern India reveal secrets of old structures that could save lives. The post The Ancient Architecture that Defies Earthquakes appeared first on Nautilus.
The powerful 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 6 killed almost 50,000 people, most of whom died under rubble.
The tragedy falls in a decades-long history of outsized death and destruction from recent earthquakes: The 1999 İzmit earthquake near Istanbul killed at least 17,000 people; the 2001 Gujarat earthquake in India killed upward of 20,000; and the 2005 Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan killed more than 87,000 and left some 3.5 million people unhoused. The immediate cause of the human tragedies was not the shaking ground itself, but the buildings people were in, most of which were constructed of reinforced cement concrete, a relatively quick and
