• A 9.5 earthquake struck about 3,800 years in northern Chile, a new study has found.

• It caused a megatsunami that sent waves crashing from Chile to New Zealand, the study said.

• Nearby coastlines were uninhabitable for 1,000 years because of the tsunami's devastating impact.

According to a new study, archeologists have found evidence of the largest earthquake in human history, which caused a 5000-mile-long megatsunami that devastated coastlines for a millennium, LiveScience reported.

The 9.5 magnitude earthquake struck about 3,800 years in northern Chile, the study in the Science Advances journal determined.

The study said it was a megathrust earthquake, which is when one tectonic plate is forced under another. These earthquakes often cause tsunamis more destructive than the earthquakes themselves.

The earthquake led to an extremely powerful tsunami that created waves 66-feet-high and stretched from northern Chile to New Zealand, the study said.

The tsunami sent car-sized boulders crashing up to 620 miles inland, according to a statement by the University of Southampton, making nearby coastlines uninhabitable for 1,000 years.

Archeologists found evidence of marine sediments "very high up and a long way inland," said the University of Southampton's Professor James Goff, per the statement. "So it could not have been a storm that put them there," he added.

Archeologists also excavated ancient stone structures built by humans, found underneath tsunami deposits on Chile's northern coast, LiveScience reported.

The structures were lying backward, facing the sea, suggesting they had been toppled by the tsunami's backwash. "The local population there were left with nothing," Goff explained in the statement.

"Our archaeological work found that a huge social upheaval followed as communities moved inland beyond the reach of tsunamis," Goff continued. "It was over 1,000 years before people returned to live at the coast again, which is an amazing length of time given that they relied on the sea for food."

(editor：)