By which I mean what is the actual cause of death for most people killed by earthquakes? I was reading a list of the 10 deadliest earthquakes ever and a number happened hundreds or even over a 1,000 years ago. This would be in a time where I presume people would have been less likely to live in large buildings and get buried under rubble. So how exactly were they killed?
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People still lived in houses 1,000 years ago, you know. Maybe not a 8 story building, but masonry was a thing for thousands of years before written history became a thing.
Which brings me to your question: falling stuff kills people, not earthquakes. You could be living in a roman house in 500 B.C. and the thing would crumble on you and crush you to death when an earthquake happens. If you were in an open field with no real falling hazards, earthquakes would not be very dangerous unless the earth happened to split in that very spot and you fell into a pit. And the ground beneath you failing does not happen often enough to kill loads of people. Either that or you can die to a subsequent tsunami, which is way more dangerous than the earth shaking.
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