www射-国产免费一级-欧美福利-亚洲成人福利-成人一区在线观看-亚州成人

Global EditionASIA 中文雙語Fran?ais
World
Home / World / Reporter's Journal

Great flood theory could fill a lot of gaping holes in history

By Chris Davis | China Daily USA | Updated: 2016-08-10 11:13
Share
Share - WeChat

An archaeological site in the upper Yellow River region. Xinhua

The inventory of flood legends through the ages is long and wide. Ancient Sumerian myth talks about a king who saved his people after learning that the gods did not intend to spare anyone from an impending deluge. Both Plato and Ovid wrote about a great flood that had occurred thousands of years before them. In Hindu mythology, Vishnu took the form of a fish to warn a king of a coming flood in time for him to build a great ship and save his family, a do-it-yourself project also pulled off successfully by Noah in the Bible.

The list goes on - Finn, Welsh and Norse in Europe; Mbuti, Maasai and Yoruba in Africa; Maori, Hopi, Navajo all have flood stories. The Inuit reasoned that only a great flood could explain why you can find sea shells in the mountains.

All the legendary floods seem to have one thing in common - they punctuate game-changing historical events.

That's what makes the new theory about a mega-flood on the Yellow River so fascinating. Not only because the evidence suggests that the Great Flood of Chinese lore really happened, or that the legendary first Emperor Yu really existed, but the timing of it puts it right on the cusp of China's transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, around 1900 BCE, and the emergence of the Erlitou culture.

Emperor Yu was believed to have said: "The flood is pouring forth destruction, boundless and overwhelming. It spills over hills and mountains," which is a pretty good description of the model described by the geologists writing in Science magazine.

A massive earthquake sends mountainsides of avalanches crashing into the steep Jishi Gorge, creating a natural dam the height of a 65-story building. Downstream the Yellow River slows to a trickle. Upstream from the blockage, the waters rise, and rise, filling the gorge over a period of nine months.

Once high enough, the waters begin to spill over the dam, which quickly erodes away, opening the floodgates, so to speak. The scientists figured the water came down the river valley at a rate of half a million cubic meters per second - a tsunami of biblical proportions that nothing can get out of the way of.

Darryl Granger, a geologist at Purdue University and co-author of the paper, tried to put that in perspective: "That's roughly equivalent to the largest flood ever measured on the Amazon River, the world's largest river. It's among the largest known floods to have happened on Earth during the past 10,000 years."

Towns and villages, levees and canals for 1,000 miles downstream would have been washed away or submerged, the authors suggest. And people would have been talking about it for years, generations on end.

Winston Churchill was apparently fond of saying that the Chinese character for "crisis" was a combination of the characters for "danger" and "opportunity".

And an opportunity it proved to be for Yu, first emperor of the Xia Dynasty, dredger of canals, digger of channels that drain the deadly torrents away and tame them into service.

"He brings order out of the chaos and defines the land, separating what would become the center of Chinese civilization," said co-author David Cohen, assistant professor of anthropology at National Taiwan University.

"This outburst flood provides us with a tantalizing hint that the Xia Dynasty might really have existed."

The theory needs more supporting evidence to get the entire scientific community on board, but in that wonderful way that science works, researchers now know what to look for.

University of Washington geomorphologist David Montgomery wrote an accompanying commentary for the study in Science, calling the paper compelling evidence "for the historicity of the Great Flood myth," noting that flood myths from various cultures usually spring from the environment they live in.

Contact the writer at chrisdavis@chinadailyusa.com

Most Viewed in 24 Hours
Top
BACK TO THE TOP
English
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
主站蜘蛛池模板: 亚洲欧美日韩中文字幕在线一区 | 一级片视频在线 | 国产视频高清在线 | 毛片网站在线看 | 国产成人精品免费视频大全可播放的 | 91精品国产免费 | 欧美经典成人在观看线视频 | 日本视频免费在线播放 | 国产免费v片在线看 | 亚洲毛片在线免费观看 | 美女视频黄a视频免费全过程 | 国产日韩欧美视频在线 | 国产精自产拍久久久久久 | 日日摸人人看97人人澡 | 久久综合香蕉久久久久久久 | 国产高清一区二区三区视频 | 久久91综合国产91久久精品 | 日韩美女大全视频在线 | 99久热在线精品视频观看 | 国产成人系列 | 亚洲综合精品 | 成人黄色一级毛片 | 亚洲男人的性天堂 | 玖玖这里只有精品 | 一 级做人爱全视频在线看 一本不卡 | 国产精品成人不卡在线观看 | 国产在线爱做人成小视频 | 91精品国产福利尤物免费 | 国产午夜精品久久理论片 | 一区二区三区四区在线播放 | 香蕉福利久久福利久久香蕉 | 日本亚洲欧美国产日韩ay高清 | 国产视频一二三 | 免费观看欧美一级特黄 | 国产午夜一级淫片 | 在线视频日韩精品 | 99久热在线精品视频播放6 | 怡红院成人永久免费看 | 美女久草 | 亚洲国产精品一区二区三区 | 日韩欧美中文字幕在线观看 |