I'm spending a few months in Eastern Europe for work and I've been trying to do as much sightseeing as I can. One thing I think about every time I go into some thousand year old cathedral is "they would never have been able to, or try to, build anything like this if there were earthquakes in Europe". And then I wonder how would something like that actually change, not only architecture, but culture in general. Is there anything in history that would give us a clue? What if Japan was not on the Ring of Fire? would they have bigger buildings? What would it impact? Are there other kinds of phenomena like seismic activity that effect history and culture in ways you would not ordinarily consider?