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: 国内精品美女写真视频 | 日本高清视频免费在线观看 | 国产综合久久久久 | 男人躁女人躁的好爽免费视频 | 91久久青青草原线免费 | 国产三级播放 | 色老久久精品偷偷鲁一区 | 午夜刺激爽爽视频免费观看 | 久久精品国产99久久香蕉 | 欧美亚洲网站 | 精品国产一区二区三区不卡 | 色爽爽爽爽爽爽爽爽 | 色播亚洲视频在线观看 | 午夜性爽快免费视频播放 | 久热精品男人的天堂在线视频 | 久草免费在线播放视频 | 国产一区国产二区国产三区 | 午夜在线精品不卡国产 | 日产乱码精品一二三区 | 国产呦在线观看视频 | 日韩免费高清一级毛片在线 | a毛片免费全部播放完整成 a毛片免费全部在线播放毛 | 精品三级视频 | 成年男女拍拍拍免费视频 | 免费人成在线观看网站视频 | 特级欧美午夜aa毛片 | 国产一级a毛片 | 特级毛片aaa免费版 特级毛片a级毛免费播放 | 国产福利不卡一区二区三区 | 欧美日韩亚洲另类 | 久久精品国产一区 | 一区二区网站在线观看 | 免费一级肉体全黄毛片 | 久久久久久99精品 | 国产欧美视频一区二区三区 | 理论在线看 | 丁香狠狠色婷婷久久综合 | 视频一区中文字幕 | 99久久精品国产自免费 | 国产真实乱子伦精品视手机观看 | 欧美美女视频网站 |