The inhabitants of this ancient civilization built a city such as had not been seen before in all of Asia and even on the entire planet. It is about the Liangzhu culture, which flourished along the banks of the Yangtze River Delta in eastern China. The archaeological remains show signs of great social, cultural and technological advances framed in its time, especially in agriculture and aquaculture. Signs of sophisticated architecture have even been found with ingenious hydraulic engineering that allowed them to enable canals, dams and water reservoirs. The latter makes Liangzhu a Neolithic “Venice of the East”. But none of these wonders would last long.
The Liangzhu culture would last for a millennium, as about 4,300 years ago the city was abruptly abandoned. Until now, only possible hypotheses were considered, such as a catastrophic flood that wiped out the city and its innovations.
Christoph Spötl, a geologist at the University and Innsbruck, Austria, says: “A thin layer of clay was found in the surviving ruins, pointing to a possible connection between the disappearance of advanced society and the flooding of the Yangtze River. or the floods of the East China Sea ”. Despite this, “it was not possible to reach firm conclusions about the real cause from the layer of mud.” But now we do have a sharper picture of the flood that drowned this amazing place.
An international team together with Spötl have dug deeper into the mud deposits to get to examine mineral formations (speleothems) such as the stalagmites of two underwater caves in the region. These formations keep the climatic conditions of the past as if it were a signature. The first author of the article is Haiwei Zhang of Xi’an Jiaotong University in China and his analysis of the stalagmite samples reveals that the collapse of the Liangzhu culture coincided with a period of extremely high rainfall that would last for more than a decade. and that they would be due to a higher frequency in the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions. In Spötl’s words:
“Most likely the massive monsoon rains induced such severe flooding of the Yangtze and its tributaries that even the sophisticated dams and canals could not support such a mass of water, destroying the city of Liangzhu and forcing people to flee.”
According to the researchers, previous climate changes may have affected other Neolithic cultures, although it seems to be more evident in that thriving Liangzhu culture. In fact, they were prepared for dry periods, as shown by the presence of large-scale hydraulic complexes. “This suggests that the Liangzhu society was effectively managing water resources by using hydraulic infrastructure for flood mitigation and / or irrigation to survive in a dry climate,” they say in their study. But the passage of time caused the climate to become even drier, culminating in a possible mega-drought some 4,400 years ago, at which point it appears that dam construction has stopped. And then the rains would come, in two periods, roughly 4,400 and 4,300 years ago.
“Our speleothem records, together with geochemical evidence of flood deposits above the Liangzhu culture layer, suggest that massive rains throughout the lower-middle reaches of the Yangtze River Valley may have induced river flooding and / or marine floods above the bank carried by the plume of the Yangtze River, thus preventing human habitation and rice cultivation, ”the authors explain.
The abandonment of the region would most likely lead to the collapse of the Liangzhu culture. For hundreds of years after, the humid conditions would remain and other ancient cultures arose in the area, until another great drought would forever end the Neolithic societies of the region. Around the same time, Chinese society was about to begin a new chapter of transformation with the founding of the Xia dynasty in 2070 BC. C., considered the first Chinese dynasty and that was directed by Yu the Great, nickname of Si Wen Ming. Before Yu the Great, the title of emperor was not hereditary, it was granted to the person considered by the community as the highest virtue. But his son Qǐ did inherit the throne, thus beginning the Xia dynasty, the first Chinese dynasty.
“While many documents indicate that leader Yu built the Xia dynasty because he managed to successfully manage river flooding, some studies suggest that Yu’s control over floods can be attributed to climate change,” the researchers explain based on their own data on the speleothems investigated.
“This observation provides strong new evidence that the rise of the Xia dynasty occurred in the context of a major climate transition from wet to dry, in line with Chinese historical records and previous studies.”
The study has been published in Science Advances, in an article titled Collapse of the Liangzhu and other Neolithic cultures in the lower Yangtze region in response to climate change , under the pen of more than 20 authors. It has been an interdisciplinary work, in which geological, climatic and historical data have been contrasted, among other disciplines. The article you just read is an adaptation of Mysterious Vanishing of Advanced Chinese Civilization 4,000 Years Ago Finally Solved .
