Fresh geologic evidence seems to confirm China's "Great Flood" on the Yellow River isn't myth and neither is the Xia Dynasty that gave rise to China's civilization and the dynasties that ruled it for centuries.

What's being claimed as the first evidence this ancient Chinese legend of the Great Flood is true was unearthed by a team of archaeologists and geographers led by Wu Qinglong at Peking University in Beijing. The team discovered sedimentary evidence the Great Flood really did happen and it occurred in 1920 BC.

Like Us on Facebook

The Great Flood of Gun-Yu (also known as the Gun-Yu myth) was a major flood that continued for at least two generations. It caused great population displacements along with other disasters such as famine. The flood is traditionally dated to the third millennium BCE during the reign of Emperor Yao.

An earthquake some 4,000 years ago created a massive landslide in deep, narrow valley. That landslide blocked the gorge, forming a pyramid-like dam of rock and dirt that blocked the Yellow River.

Wu's team believes the dam held anywhere from six to nine months. As the riverbed downstream turned dry, a lake consisting of four cubic miles of water was formed and kept growing. Then the dam broke all at once, unleashing a terrible torrent of destruction.

The researchers say the terrific flood sent over four trillion gallons of water crashing down a corridor now known as the Jishi Gorge. The deluge that swept all before it then smashed into the Guanting Basin in central China.

The team mapped and dated distinctive sediments deposited downstream of a Qinghai Province dam when the dam broke. In further work, they determined the flood that broke the dam was of enormous proportions. Using radiocarbon dating techniques on samples that included human bone, they dated the flood to 1920 BC.

"The ... flood shares the main characteristics of the Great Flood described in ancient texts," said the authors. If their flood is indeed the event that came to be known as the Great Flood, researchers could propose a new start date for the Xia dynasty at 1,900 BC.

This date not only coincides with the major transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age in the Yellow River valley, possibly resolving a longstanding contradiction among Chinese historians about when Xia started in relation to this critical period in history.

It also coincides with the beginning of the Erlitou culture that dominated China in the early Bronze Age, supporting arguments this culture is the archaeological remains of the Xia dynasty.

Taken together, these results reveal how the concurrence of these major natural and sociopolitical events may be an "illustration of a profound and complicated cultural response to an extreme natural disaster that connected many groups living along the Yellow River.

The paper by Wu Qinglong is titled, "Outburst flood at 1920 BCE supports historicity of China's Great Flood and the Xia dynasty."

TagsGreat Flood, china, Yellow River, Wu Qinglong, Xia Dynasty