Fourteen skeletons of victims killed by an earthquake nigh 4000 old age ago in a settlement prognosticate Lajia , sometimes called " the Asian Pompeii . " The earthquake is think to also have trigger a massive river flowage . Image credit : Cai Linhai
Along the money box of the Yellow River in northwesterly China ’s Qinghai province , scientist have distinguish evidence of one of the most cataclysmic floods on Earth in the past 10,000 years .
This catastrophe , which go on nearly 4000 geezerhood ago , might meet the Great Flood of Taiwanese legends . Historians have debate whether this flood was merely a myth , part of a founding story to bolster the legitimacy of China ’s dynasties . But the findingspublishedin the journalSciencetoday , August 4 , offer the first forcible evidence of such a catastrophe .
The scope of the flood that the researchers key is unmanageable to imagine . According to their Reconstruction Period , a bulwark of water some 427 feet eminent — one - third of the top of the Empire State Building — burst through a natural dam in the Jishi Gorge and then rushed downstream at a rate of 300,000–500,000 cubic meters per second . After the decameter infract , the Yellow River rose 125 feet above its normal level .
“ To put that into view , that ’s roughly tantamount to the largest flood ever measured on the Amazon river , the world ’s large river , ” bailiwick carbon monoxide gas - author Darryl Granger , a geologist at Purdue University in Indiana , distinguish newsperson during a press league Wednesday . “ It ’s among the big known floods to have happened on Earth during the preceding 10,000 days . And it ’s more than 500 times larger than a flood we might expect on the Yellow River from a monumental rain . "
Jishi Gorge today , upstream from the location of the ancient landslide dam . icon credit : Wu Qinglong
The research worker , led by Wu Qinglong , a prof of geography at Nanjing Normal University , represent typical flood sediments along both side of the river and outlined a calamity scenario . They think an temblor triggered a monumental rock’n’roll slide that dammed the river . Then , over the course of six to nine months , a lake filled up behind the 600 - foot - high dam . When this natural dam overlook and then fail , an outburst photoflood occur .
For one C of miles downstream , water inundate Neolithic Greenwich Village like Lajia , sometimes called the " Asian Pompeii . " Just before the flood , Lajia had been destroyed in an temblor — the same one that trigger off the decametre - form rock slide . Archaeologists poke through the rubble there have discovered bodies and artifacts frozen in time , such as theworld ’s old bowl of noggin .
The earthquake may have lasted just one minute , but its impingement was enormous . Image cite : Wu Qinglong
“ The earthquake - landslip dam - outburst flood scenario makes horse sense , ” say James O’Connor , a geologist with the U.S. Geological Service who has explore the universe ’s turgid torrent [ PDF ] . He was n’t involve in the current subject field . “ Similar historic and prehistoric case have been document in most mountainous regions of the world , although this one seems to have been one of the larger unity . ”
As O’Connor note , more piece of work is necessitate to in full understand potential downstream effect . But more recent history has shew that similar outburst floods can be annihilative . A landslide dkm outburst flood on China ’s Dadu River in 1786 is consider to havekilled more than 100,000 the great unwashed .
The flood could be the disastrous Yellow River flood described in Chinese generator from the mid- to late first millennium BCE , such as theBook of Documentsand theRecords of the Grand Historian . According to those tradition , a legendary fighter , Yu the Great , received a elysian mandate that allowed him to domesticise the flood lamp waters . After he led a great - scale dredging mathematical operation , Yu build the Xia dynasty , the aim first dynasty of China , make for political order out of the chaos left behind by the annihilative lifelike disaster .
The reliability of this lineage news report has been deliberate , as many parts of these Taiwanese historiographies are clearly legendary . Take , for example , the storey of Yu ’s conception . allot to archaeologist Robert Murowchick , director of theInternational Center for East Asian Archaeology and Cultural Historyat Boston University , ancient sources say that either Yu ’s female parent became pregnant by eating grains of Job ’s Tears or that Yu ’s father , Gun , was action and wrench to stone after he fail to stem the alluvion with an “ ever - swelling mould , ” and when someone cut the Lucy Stone open , out come up Yu .
The varying timeline for the commencement of the Xia dynasty grant to traditional Chinese culture , the Xia - Shang - Zhou Chronology Project , and the flood newly identified and go steady by Wu et al . picture course credit : Carla Schaffer / AAAS
If the material flood key in the newSciencepaper is truly the Great Flood of those ancient historiographies , then the Xia dynasty might have been establish more late than previously believed . The commencement of the first dynasty has been dated to 2200 BCE , and sometimes as early as 2700 BCE . ( Still other scholars have argued that this dynasty never exist because no archaeologic evidence assort with it has been discover . ) Based on radiocarbon dates obtain from three skeletons of shaver who were killed in the prostration of a house at Lajia during the quake , the researchers estimate that the leave flood took position around 1920 BCE . This time period also or so mark the outset of the Bronze Age in China , when the first urban order come forth . Altogether , this suggests there could be some truth to the stories about Yu ’s grand effort — though no archeologic evidence of post - flood dredging has been discovered yet .
“ I think it is an challenging good example of how good geological detective work can provide grounds that can help to shed light on the rich textual histories that we have from ancient China , ” Murowchick , who was n’t imply in the study , toldmental_floss . He noted , however , that the survey ’s authors have not yet turn out that the account of Yu and his flood - stemming human action could be take as fact .
“ I cogitate a parallel of latitude can be draw with crusade to find geologic grounds of the scriptural flood , ” Murowchick said . “ If concrete geologic evidence were find in the appropriate location of the Near East , it would aid us to understand the facts of a exceptional flood tide upshot , but it does n’t necessarily demonstrate that narrative of Noah and his Ark are true . ”
Similarly , O’Connor say this may be a select object lesson of the flood stories that corroborate many caption and even religions : “ Although we can never know for sure for many of these account , there ’s something immensely square , at least to me , in understanding how human history , cultural traditions , and notion systems may relate to specific natural phenomenon . ”
