Ancient Eclipse / Earthquake Connections
It seems that some ancient scholars were aware of eclipse / earthquake connections. First up is Aristotle. While his explanation is most likely wrong, I doubt he would have provided it without a known connection with eclipses:
An earthquake sometimes coincides with an eclipse of the moon for
the same reason. When the earth is on the point of being interposed,
but the light and heat of the sun has not quite vanished from the
air but is dying away, the wind which causes the earthquake before the
eclipse, turns off into the earth, and calm ensues. For there often
are winds before eclipses: at nightfall if the eclipse is at midnight,
and at midnight if the eclipse is at dawn. They are caused by the
lessening of the warmth from the moon when its sphere approaches the
point at which the eclipse is going to take place. So the influence
which restrained and quieted the air weakens and the air moves again
and a wind rises, and does so later, the later the eclipse.A severe earthquake does not stop at once or after a single shock,
but first the shocks go on, often for about forty days; after that,
for one or even two years it gives premonitory indications in the same
place.http://www.greektexts.com/library/Aristotle/Meteorology/eng/496.html
Here are some more:
“In first days of the next summer there was an eclipse of the sun at the time of new moon, and in the early part of the same month an earthquake.”
[Source: NASA]
2nd-century chronicler Phlegon of Tralles
“a great eclipse of the sun occurred at the sixth hour that excelled every other before it, turning the day into such darkness of night that the stars could be seen in heaven, and the earth moved in Bithynia, toppling many buildings in the city of Nicaea”
[Source: Wikipedia]
Matthew 27:45, 27:51-54 (Christian Bible)
Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. (…) And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent;
Book of Amos 8:8-9 (Hebrew Bible)
Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it, and all of it rise like the Nile, and be tossed about and sink again, like the Nile of Egypt? On that day, says the Lord God, I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight.
