Some aspects of the early history of seismology

Abstract

From the earliest times, people have been terrified yet fascinated by the workings of the Earth. Indeed records of earthquakes have been kept in China for over 3000 years and for 1500 years in Japan. because of the interior of the Earth is inaccessible, nothing about it could be known with any certainty. For thousands of years, thinkers and writers could base their conclusions on a limited number of observations, some of which were as follows; the Earth was not stable and sometimes shook violently; the earthquakes produced were more frequent in some localities than in others; they were sometimes accompanied by heavy rumblings, fissures in the ground, changes in the level of the land, and tidal waves. Oftentimes earthquakes were associated with volcanoes or "burning mountains."