Earthquake clustering

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100602193429.htm is a post on earthquakes triggering other earthquakes, causing clusters of them – which involves the synchronisation of faults in the crust. The synchronisation of earhquakes – clusters of ruptures of several faults followed by phases of quiescence has apparently been found in palaeo-seismic records (or proxy data). It reflects the common observation that large earthquakes can trigger others on nearby fault lines. This is an interesting line of research as it has a possible parallel in a historical context – the Bronze Age site destructions in the Aegean, western Asia and the across the top of the Indian sub-continent. Claude Schaeffer, and more recently Amos Nur, have suggested clusters of earthquakes occurred at the end of the EB Age (and its subdivisions), the MB and LB ages – and Schaeffer was heavily criticised for doing so. It spoilt his career – he became a laughing stock in polite archaeological circles. Archaeologists, according to Nur, mutter and make off whenever he broaches the subject of earthquakes in respect of site destructions in the Bronze Ages. They simply do not want to know – the power of the consensus theory is capable of drowning any contrary view – not just in modern global warming but in all scientific disciplines (apart from the practical such as medicine, civil and electrical engineering etc). However, here we have geologists, a much more down to earth science than archaeology or anthropology, which are a bit airy fairy, and often nonsensical, talking freely about clusters of earthquakes – not just along a single fault line but affecting a multiplication of fault lines (many of which may of course radiate from a single large one).