WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) – Scientists have found what could be geological evidence of a legendary flood linked to the establishment of China’s first dynasty, Xia Dynasty, and even with the beginning of Chinese civilization, noted in a study published today in the journal Science.
the flood occurred around 1920 BC year in the Yellow River, says the study, two or three centuries later than originally thought, which means that the Xia Dynasty and known Emperor Yu, had a later start to the Chinese historians thought.
according to Chinese legend, the emperor Yu controlled flood through dredging, which earned him the divine mandate to establish the Xia Dynasty.
But he had not found any scientific evidence in this regard, which led some scholars to believe that the legend of the Xia Dynasty was nothing more than a figment of later historians to justify political succession, said Qinglong Wu from Nanjing Normal University, who led the study.
in the new study, Wu and colleagues reported on geological evidence of a catastrophic flood on the Yellow river about 4,000 years ago.
Wu said the flooding is the result of a landslide caused by an earthquake that led to the Yellow river to form a huge lake in the gorge Jishi at the end of the Tibetan plateau.
in this case, the landslide could have blocked completely the Yellow river for six to nine months before being surpassed, Wu said.
“Between 11 and 16 cubic kilometers of water from the lake formed were released in a very short period when the dam broke, which resulted in a huge flood, “Wu told Xinhua.
Using an equation standard engineering to determine the discharge of flood, the researchers calculated that the water could have traveled downstream at a rate of between 300,000 and 500,000 cubic meters per second.
The damage may have come to feel at a distance of up to 2,000 kilometers downstream.
“to put it in perspective, this equates more or less the biggest flood ever measured in the Amazon river, the longest river in the world, “said one of the study authors, Darryl Granger, a geologist at Purdue University in a conference call.
” This is one of the largest known floods on Earth in the past 10,000 years and is more than 500 times higher than we might expect flooding on the Yellow river after a rainy massive event. So this catastrophic flood must have been devastating for anyone living downstream of the Yellow River “event.
To date the flood, the researchers used techniques radiocarbon dating skeletons of children they died in the same earthquake that triggered a massive landslide in a prehistoric site called Lajia, 25 kilometers downstream of the gorge Jishi.
the results indicate that the flood occurred around 1920 BC, which coincides with the important transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in the valley of the Yellow river.
“Because this flooding occurs at a crucial time in the development of Chinese civilization moment, this geological event takes even more important, “said David Cohen, an archaeologist at the National Taiwan University, who also worked on the study.
” This is because the flood data of the likely period in which the legendary occurred great flood of China. This is the first time that there is a large enough to detect flooding. The flooding may have caused social affectations downriver for years and, if this is the case, we believe it may have been the origin of the legend of the great flood. “
According to legend, Emperor Yu and his father required about 20 years to control this flood. As a result, the researchers propose a new date of the Xia Dynasty in 1900 BC
“the flood offers a promising track the Xia Dynasty may have existed in reality, “Cohen said
.” Our reasoning is this: If the founding of the Xia Dynasty is actually linked to a great flood, then here we have evidence of a natural event which may have been recorded in the long run as the great flood, “he said.” If the great flood actually happened, then maybe Xia Dynasty actually existed. The two are directly related to each other “.
Traditionally, historians have dated the beginning of the Xia Dynasty in 2200 BC and a draft chronology sponsored by the government adopted the date of 2070 BC
in an additional perspective in Science, David Montgomery of the University of Washington wrote: “the great floods occupy a central place in some of the oldest stories in the world. And the flood of Emperor Yu now is another story of these potentially rooted in geological events. “
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