RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Outburst flood at 1920 BCE supports historicity of China’s Great Flood and the Xia dynasty
JF Science
JO Science
FD American Association for the Advancement of Science
SP 579
OP 582
DO 10.1126/science.aaf0842
VO 353
IS 6299
A1 Wu, Qinglong
A1 Zhao, Zhijun
A1 Liu, Li
A1 Granger, Darryl E.
A1 Wang, Hui
A1 Cohen, David J.
A1 Wu, Xiaohong
A1 Ye, Maolin
A1 Bar-Yosef, Ofer
A1 Lu, Bin
A1 Zhang, Jin
A1 Zhang, Peizhen
A1 Yuan, Daoyang
A1 Qi, Wuyun
A1 Cai, Linhai
A1 Bai, Shibiao
YR 2016
UL http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6299/579.abstract
AB Around four millennia ago, Emperor Yu the Great succeeded in controlling a huge flood in the Yellow River basin. This is considered to have led to the establishment of the Xia dynasty and the start of Chinese civilization. However, the dates of the events and the links between them have remained uncertain and controversial. Using stratigraphic data and radiocarbon dating, Wu et al. verify that the flood occurred and place the start of the Xia dynasty at about 1900 BC, thus reconciling the historical and archaeological chronologies (see the Perspective by Montgomery).Science, this issue p. 579; see also p. 538China’s historiographical traditions tell of the successful control of a Great Flood leading to the establishment of the Xia dynasty and the beginning of civilization. However, the historicity of the flood and Xia remain controversial. Here, we reconstruct an earthquake-induced landslide dam outburst flood on the Yellow River about 1920 BCE that ranks as one of the largest freshwater floods of the Holocene and could account for the Great Flood. This would place the beginning of Xia at ~1900 BCE, several centuries later than traditionally thought. This date coincides with the major transition from the Neolithic to Bronze Age in the Yellow River valley and supports hypotheses that the primary state-level society of the Erlitou culture is an archaeological manifestation of the Xia dynasty.