412 Tunisia: Utique Earthquake

Utica, the Phoenician port north of Carthage known in modern Tunisia as Utique, is the location assigned to an earthquake of the year 412, rated at Mercalli intensity X. That grade denotes the destruction of most masonry and frame structures, and for a pre-instrumental event it is inferred entirely from descriptions of ruin. No magnitude, depth, month, or day accompanies the entry, and no toll was preserved. Northern Tunisia lies within the diffuse collision zone between the African and Eurasian plates, where convergence is taken up on thrust faults through the Tell Atlas rather than at a single boundary. Roman North Africa was densely urbanised, and the survival of the record owes as much to that concentration of monumental building as to the size of the shock.

412 Utique, Tunisia: magnitude unrecorded at depth unrecorded. No recorded casualties. Historical seismic event documented in the global earthquake catalog.