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

US EUROPE AFRICA ASIA 中文
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

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

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.

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

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

Trudeau visits Sina Weibo
May gets little gasp as EU extends deadline for sufficient progress in Brexit talks
Ethiopian FM urges strengthened Ethiopia-China ties
Yemen's ex-president Saleh, relatives killed by Houthis
Most Popular
Hot Topics

...
主站蜘蛛池模板: 手机看片毛片 | 一级毛片aaaaaa免费看 | 亚洲图片国产日韩欧美 | 久久久久久国产精品免费免费 | 精品99视频 | 中文一区在线观看 | 国产伦久视频免费观看 视频 | 日韩美女一级视频 | 欧洲成人r片在线观看 | 一级亚洲 | 国产精品久久久久久久久免费观看 | 国产一区二区三区视频在线观看 | 美女大片高清特黄a大片 | 成人av手机在线观看 | 欧美一级艳片视频免费观看 | 高清三级毛片 | 99热久久国产精品一区 | 亚洲综合精品一区二区三区中文 | 情侣偷偷看的羞羞视频网站 | 国产综合精品一区二区 | 天天都色 | 性欧美另类老妇高清 | 成人欧美日韩 | 国产伦子伦视频免费 | 精品欧美日韩一区二区三区 | 久久久久18 | 国产精品成人观看视频网站 | 国产在线视频一区二区三区 | 手机看片神马午夜 | 日韩特级片 | 欧美人与鲁交大毛片免费 | 国产特黄特色一级特色大片 | 免费观看一级特黄欧美大片 | 国产黄色激情视频 | 美女mm131爽爽爽免费视色 | 免费国产黄 | 国产一区二区三区日韩欧美 | 另类亚洲孕妇分娩网址 | 欧美另类激情 | 中文字幕一区二区三区视频在线 | 2017天天爽夜夜爽精品视频 |