{
  "id": "terremotos-y-salidas-de-mar-de-las-indias",
  "type": "entity",
  "name": "Earthquakes and sea-withdrawals in the Indies: what two Jesuit naturalists put on the page, 1590-1646",
  "summary": "Two centuries before Lisbon 1755, a Jesuit in Peru wrote a chapter on earthquakes that separates them from volcanoes, places them on coasts, reports the great ones running in order from Chile to Quito, and describes the sea coming ashore twice. He also records why Lima's dead were counted in tens rather than thousands. A second Jesuit, in Chile, argues the opposite about volcanoes. Both are printed here with their hedges.",
  "locale": "en",
  "tags": [
    "americas",
    "peru",
    "chile",
    "science",
    "natural-history",
    "earthquakes",
    "sixteenth-century",
    "seventeenth-century",
    "chronicles"
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "acosta-historia-natural-y-moral-1590"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "ovalle-historica-relacion-de-chile"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "colonial-records-as-a-climate-archive"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "epidemic-records-of-spanish-america"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "unanue-observaciones-clima-de-lima"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "relaciones-geograficas-de-indias"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "cieza-cronica-del-peru-1553"
    },
    {
      "rel": "related",
      "target": "alzate-gacetas-de-literatura-1788"
    }
  ],
  "questions": [
    "What did sixteenth-century Spanish writers say about earthquakes in the Americas?",
    "Is there a written record of the 1586 Lima earthquake and tsunami?",
    "Did anyone before modern seismology notice that earthquakes cluster on coasts?",
    "What is the earliest description of a tsunami in the Pacific?",
    "Did Spanish naturalists think volcanoes caused earthquakes?"
  ],
  "claims": [
    {
      "id": "c1",
      "text": "The chapter opens by refusing the easy explanation. Acosta heads capítulo 28 of his third book \"De los temblores de tierra\" and begins: \"Algunos han pensado, que de estos Bolcanes que ay en Indias, procedan los temblores de tierra, que por allá son harto frequentes. Mas porque los ay en partes tambien que no tienen vezindad con Bolcanes, no puede ser essa toda la causa.\" He keeps a shared mechanism — the hot exhalations engendered in the inner cavities of the earth, which he had just called the principal matter of volcanic fire — but he will not let the presence of a volcano stand as the explanation of a shock, because the distribution of the shocks does not match the distribution of the volcanoes.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c2",
      "text": "The generalisation he does make is about coasts, and he states it as holding on both sides of the Atlantic. \"Lo mas ordinario destos temblores, o terremotos suele ser en tierras maritimas, que tienen agua vezina. Y assi se vee en Europa y en Indias, que los pueblos muy apartados de mar y aguas, sienten menos de este trabajo, y los que son puertos, o playas, o costa, o tienen vezindad con esso, padecen mas esta calamidad.\" The reasoning he attaches to it is Aristotelian and wrong — that water stops up the pores by which the hot exhalations would escape, and that humidity condenses the surface so the heat is driven inward until it breaks — but the pattern he is reasoning about is stated as an observation over two continents rather than as a deduction.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c3",
      "text": "He then reports something more specific than a distribution: a succession. \"En el Piru ha sido cosa marauillosa y mucho de notar, que desde Chile a Quito, que son mas de quiniétas leguas, han ydo los terremotos por su orden corriendo, digo los grandes y famosos: que otros menores han sido ordinarios.\" Five hundred leagues of coast, and the great shocks going along it in order; he repeats the point after listing the events, saying they \"parece han ydo sucediendo por su orden en aquella costa todos estos terremotos notables\". The confidence here is held below the rest because the claim rests on his own collation of reports rather than on any record he cites.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c4",
      "text": "The Chilean event he puts first is described with its secondary effects and without its date. He does not remember what year it was; it \"trastornò montes enteros, y cerrò con ellos la corriente a los rios y los hizo lagunas, y derribò pueblos, y matò quantidad de hombres, y hizo salir la mar de si por algunas leguas, dexando en seco los nauios muy lexos de su puesto\", and he was told it had run three hundred leagues along the coast. Landslides damming rivers into lakes, a sea that withdrew and left ships dry, and a length of coast affected: the elements of a modern report, in a sentence that begins \"no me acuerdo q año\" and ends \"si bien me acuerdo dixeron\".",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.75
    },
    {
      "id": "c5",
      "text": "Two of the events are dated, and one of them carries an official measure. \"De ay a pocos años el de ochenta y dos fue el temblor de Arequipa, que assolò quasi aquella ciudad. Despues el año de ochenta y seys a nueue de Iulio fue el de la ciudad de los Reyes, que segun escriuio el Virey, auia corrido en largo por la costa ciento y setenta leguas, y en ancho la sierra adentro cinquenta leguas.\" The extent of the Lima earthquake of 9 July 1586 is thus reported not as the author's impression but as what the viceroy wrote — a hundred and seventy leagues along the coast by fifty inland, which is an administrative estimate of a felt area a decade before any instrument existed to make one.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c6",
      "text": "The detail that makes the Lima passage worth reprinting is about survival, not about geology. \"En este temblor fue gran misericordia del Señor, preuenir la gente, con vn ruydo gráde que sintieron algun poco antes del téblor, y como estan alli aduertidos por la costumbre, luego se pusieron en cobro saliendose a las calles, o plaças, o huertas, finalmente a lo descubierto. Y assi aunque arruynò mucho aquella ciudad, y los principales edificios de ella los derribò, o maltratò mucho: pero de la gente solo refieren auer muerto hasta catorze o veynte personas.\" A warning noise, a population already trained by habit to go into the open, a ruined city and a death toll in the tens: the causal chain is stated by the source itself, and it is a statement about behaviour rather than about providence, whatever the sentence it opens with.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c7",
      "text": "The sea then did at Lima what it had done in Chile, and this time he gives the numbers. \"Hizo tambien entonces la mar el mismo mouimiento que auia hecho en Chile, que fue poco despues de passado el temblor de tierra, salir ella muy braua de sus playas, y entrar la tierra adentro quasi dos leguas, porque subio mas de catorze braças, y cubrio toda aquella playa nadando en el agua que dixe, las vigas y madera que alli auia.\" A wave following the shock, an inundation reaching nearly two leagues inland, a rise of more than fourteen brazas, and floating timber as the evidence of the run-up. The following year, he adds, a similar shock came in the kingdom and city of Quito.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    },
    {
      "id": "c8",
      "text": "He also prints the exceptions to his own rule, which is why the chapter reads as an argument rather than a doctrine. Mediterranean and inland cities \"sienten a vezes grandes daños de terremotos, como en Indias la ciudad de Chachapoyas, y en Italia la de Ferrara\"; Mexico City's tremors are held by some to come from the lake it stands in, though they are not great; fewer tremors are felt where there are many wells; and \"algunos han obseruado, que tras años muy secos viniendo tiempos lluuiosos, suelen mouerse tales temblores de tierra\". The last is a testable empirical generalisation offered as somebody else's observation, and it is false; it is recorded here because the chapter's method — collect reports, state the pattern, name the exceptions, attribute the observation — is the part of it that survives its physics.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c9",
      "text": "The same chapter carries a landslide account with a date, a place and a named village. In Chuquiavo, \"que por otro nombre se dize la Paz, ciudad del Piru\", in the year eighty-one, \"vn pedaço grandissimo de vna altissima barranca\" fell suddenly near a town called Angoango; it took a great part of the town and killed a quantity of the Indians there, and the ground that came down \"corrio la tierra que se derribò continuadamente legua y media, como si fuera agua, o cera derretida, de modo que tapò vna laguna\". Acosta flags the report himself — \"lo que apenas parece creyble, pero afirmãlo personas fidedignas\" — and the description of a debris flow travelling a league and a half like melted wax and blocking a lake is offered with that warning attached.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.8
    },
    {
      "id": "c10",
      "text": "Fifty-six years later a second Jesuit, writing on Chile, draws the opposite conclusion from the same kind of evidence, and the disagreement is worth more than either verdict. Ovalle, having described the ash a volcano threw up, turns to \"el de Ariquipa, que dexo sepultadas las viñas, y casi lo quedara la mesma ciudad; y hasta oy se ven las ruinas que dexó\" — and then makes the argument Acosta had refused: \"pero aduierte que cessaron desde entonces los temblores, y terremotos, que eran antes muy grandes, y esta deue de ser la causa, que los que se sienten en Chile, ayan sido siempre menores, que los que se han experimentado en el Perù, por auer alli tantas bocas por donde desahogarse, y respirar el ayre.\" Volcanoes as relief valves that reduce earthquakes, where Acosta had said the two share a matter but not a distribution. Confidence is low on both sides of this: it is a contested inference in 1646 and it is wrong now.",
      "sources": [
        "ovalle-historica-relacion-1648"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.7
    },
    {
      "id": "c11",
      "text": "What these two witnesses cannot do should be said plainly, because the temptation with an early observation is to read the later science back into it. Neither measures anything: there is no instrument, no time, no intensity, and the only count in either passage is \"hasta catorze o veynte personas\". Both are Jesuits writing works of apologetic natural history, and Acosta frames the whole subject theologically — earthquakes as \"alguaziles de la diuina justicia\", with Ecclesiastes quoted in the margin, \"Fecit hæc, ut timeatur\". His reports are at second hand and he says so: \"dixeron\", \"afirmãlo personas fidedignas\", \"no me acuerdo q año\". No indigenous account of an Andean earthquake is cited by either man, although the habit of running into the open that Acosta credits with holding Lima's death toll down is attributed by him only to \"la costumbre\" of the place, and nothing read here says whose custom it was or how old.",
      "sources": [
        "acosta-historia-natural-moral-1590",
        "ovalle-historica-relacion-1648"
      ],
      "confidence": 0.85
    }
  ],
  "takeaways": [],
  "faqs": [],
  "evidence_tier": "primary",
  "evidence": {
    "level": "industry_observation",
    "source_types": [
      "paper"
    ]
  },
  "moat_flag": false,
  "winning_edge": "Histories of seismology in English begin at Lisbon in 1755 and reach the Americas only with the instrumental era; Acosta's chapter, when it appears at all, is filed as Aristotelian natural philosophy and quoted for its exhalations. What is actually on those four pages of the 1590 sheets is a different thing: a refusal to derive earthquakes from volcanoes on distributional grounds, a coastal concentration stated for two continents with its own counter-examples named, a five-hundred-league succession along the Peruvian coast, two sea-withdrawals of which one is given with inundation distance and run-up height, a felt area for 9 July 1586 attributed to the viceroy's own report, a debris flow with its length and its credibility warning, and — the part no summary carries — the warning noise and the habituated evacuation to open ground that the source itself credits with a death toll of fourteen to twenty in a ruined city. This object prints those passages with their hedges intact and sets a second Jesuit against the first on the volcano question, so that a reader gets the disagreement rather than a tidy precursor.",
  "confidence": 0.85,
  "last_verified": "2026-08-18",
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    "name": "Earthquakes and sea-withdrawals in the Indies: what two Jesuit naturalists put on the page, 1590-1646",
    "description": "Two centuries before Lisbon 1755, a Jesuit in Peru wrote a chapter on earthquakes that separates them from volcanoes, places them on coasts, reports the great ones running in order from Chile to Quito, and describes the sea coming ashore twice. He also records why Lima's dead were counted in tens rather than thousands. A second Jesuit, in Chile, argues the opposite about volcanoes. Both are printed here with their hedges.",
    "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/terremotos-y-salidas-de-mar-de-las-indias",
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    "dateModified": "2026-08-18",
    "citation": [
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Historia natural y moral de las Indias, en que se tratan las cosas notables del cielo, y elementos, metales, plantas, y animales dellas: y los ritos, y ceremonias, leyes, y gouierno, y guerras de los Indios",
        "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=26zAd4TrWXsC&pg=PA1"
      },
      {
        "@type": "CreativeWork",
        "name": "Historica relacion del Reyno de Chile, y delas missiones, y ministerios que exercita en el la Compañia de Iesus",
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    "@type": "Article",
    "headline": "Earthquakes and sea-withdrawals in the Indies: what two Jesuit naturalists put on the page, 1590-1646"
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}