600 year old stone slabs warn: "Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis."

[TalkingDog]

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/04/06/501364/main20051370.shtml?tag=pop

Modern sea walls failed to protect coastal towns from Japan's destructive tsunami last month. But in the hamlet of Aneyoshi, a single centuries-old tablet saved the day.

"High dwellings are the peace and harmony of our descendants," the stone slab reads. "Remember the calamity of the great tsunamis. Do not build any homes below this point."

It was advice the dozen or so households of Aneyoshi heeded, and their homes emerged unscathed from a disaster that flattened low-lying communities elsewhere and killed thousands along Japan's northeastern shore.

[P. Galore]

1. The NYT had an article about these about a week ago. Check it out. nt

[unkachuck]

2. "...Do not build any homes below this point."

....the warning should be updated to include nuclear power plants....

[TalkingDog]

3. There have been a lot of discussions about this among designers

scientists and governments.

But the problem is the time scale. We can decipher 600 year old text, even if the root language is different from our own.

But 100 Thousand year old language? With the possibility of calamities that could wipe out any trace of the language that created the warning. And with the possibility of a technological collapse

How do you impart the danger and time span? How do you explain the science?

Problematic is an understatement.

[JackintheGreen]

6. It doesn't even have to be 100,000 years

I work with texts relating to flood from 2nd-5th century CE and sometimes the translation problems are insurmountable. You're dealing with an entire cultural surround that was familiar to the author always foreign to the modern translator.

[damntexdem]

7. Let's work on 600-year time spans, or even less.

Let 100,000-year time spans take care of themselves.

[TalkingDog]

9. So our moral obligations for the problems we create end at what point in time?

Perhaps you can delineate that for me.

[Chris_Texas]

8. Stay classy

[MadMaddie]

4. They say we ignore historical warnings at our peril

[Art_from_Ark]

5. The problem is, 600 years ago the population there was low

It was possible to make a living with subsistence agriculture in the lowlands and hunting in the forests. But that became less and less feasible as more people moved into the area. Also, it became less and less feasible to build homes in the uplands due to the steepness of the slopes-- denude the hills for houses, and you run the risk of landslides, which are a common occurrence in Japan. Also, it is extremely difficult to go up and down, up and down steep terrain every day, especially in winter. Furthermore, houses would have to be near water sources, which would be streams running through valleys for the larger communities.