Historical Seismograms - Evidence from the AD 2000 Izu Islands ...

166 Yushou XieFigure 1. Map Showing Location of Places Mentioned in the Text.Locations are often difficult to pin down because of obscure description or changedplace iiaiiies. The cooperation of historical geographers helped us a great deal onthis matter. For example, as all the three provinces - Shanxi, Shaanxi and Ilenan -have places named Kuntung, where is tlie real epicenter of the Kuntung earthquakeof 466 B.C. is a long disputed problem. After thorough study, it is finally put atHenan Province.As we use a lunar calendar and the calendar system in various dynasties changedfrequently, accurate dates are sonietinies difficult to establish. With the help ofpaleoastronomers, we have already corrected more than 200 errors and mistakes onthe data of historical earthquakes in the former catalogues. Both lunar calendarand Gregorian calendar are listed. For dates before 1582, the Julian calendar isadded for reference.More than 20,000 kinds of literatures, documents and materials including archiveswritten in ancient Tibetan, archives written in Manchurian, archives of the Republicof China, the Customs archives, rare books and local annals, peculiar literatures andstone inscriptions, abundant materials of macroseismic investigation, documents ofneighhouririg countries, bulletins of global and regional networks of seismic stationsand catalogues of earthquakes were looked up. Through analysis and textural research,the false were eliitiiiiated and the true were retained. Errors arid mistakesin tlie Chronological Table of Chinese Earthquakes published in 1956 were correctedand its content is greatly enriched. About 50,000 items of historical materials andmore than 20,000 sets of instrumental earthquake parameters were collected. Asa result, a series of five volumes of Compilation of Hzstorical Materials of ChineseEarthquakes (Xie et al., 1983-1987) arranged chronologically from the 23rd centuryB.C. to 1980 A.D. totalling around 6,500,000 Chinese characters was compiled.