"In the past" is very broad both in time and place. There have been devastating and highly lethal earthquakes in the Middle East for thousands of years. In particular, the Antioch earthquakes in AD 115 and AD 526 killed hundreds of thousands of people, and the AD 115 one also triggered a tsunami.

You are implicitly comparing to "in the present", which is also very broad. In poorer areas, earthquakes are still extremely dangerous, but they are somewhat less so in wealthier earthquake-prone areas where structures are built to withstand them. So the 2010 Haiti earthquake (magnitude 7.0) killed hundreds of thousands, but the Chile gets magnitude ~6.5-8.0+ earthquakes pretty much every year and they usually kill only a few people. Tsunamis probably haven't gotten much more or less dangerous, but at least there is now an early warning system.

Overall, the answer to your question is probably "no", unless you focus on a time and place where a large fraction of the population was nomadic. Stone or brick or clay buildings can collapse and kill you no matter how large or small they are. The best way to protect buildings is to reinforce them with steel, which has only become economical in the last century or two -- the Bessemer process for mass-producing steel was invented in 1856. Also, earthquakes can destroy infrastructure and cause famines, which is how the 1202 Syria earthquake killed (edit: by some estimates) over a million people. But modern relief efforts are more effective at mitigating famines, at least if the affected country's government is stable and open to outside relief.

You might get a better answer if you can specify a time and place.