![]() Cracks in the ground and flattened structures suggest an earthquake destroyed Lajia and killed its residents before the flood. Flood sediment covered the remains of a previously excavated human settlement called Lajia, located 25 kilometers below the ancient dam. ![]() Cai Linhaiĭownstream, the team found sediment and boulders carried by floodwaters. DISASTER SPOT Skeletons of victims killed by an earthquake at China’s Lajia site helped scientists estimate that a massive flood ravaged the Yellow River valley nearly 4,000 years ago. The ancient dam backed up a lake that was about 200 meters deep, they estimate. A scar in the earth above the right bank must have been created by the landslide, the researchers say. Remnants of the dam, found on the left and right riverbanks, included masses of soil and shattered rock typical of landslides. Wu’s team studied remains of a landslide dam along the Yellow River in north central China. New evidence of an ancient Yellow River flood “provides a tantalizing hint that the Xia dynasty actually existed,” Cohen said. Historical records of the Xia dynasty are scanty, archaeologist and study coauthor David Cohen of National Taiwan University in Taipei said at the news conference. Some scholars regard this tale as a myth or as propaganda devised to justify centralized, imperial rule. Legend has it that Yu’s success enabled him to launch Chinese civilization by founding the Xia dynasty. These accounts tell of a hero named Yu who spent decades leading efforts to dredge rivers and drain floodwaters, as well as personally fighting off supernatural beasts, following catastrophic flooding of the Yellow River. That natural disaster came to be known as the Great Flood, first in Chinese folktales and later in written histories from around 3,000 years ago, the researchers propose. ![]() “This was one of the largest known floods on Earth over the past 10,000 years,” geologist and study coauthor Darryl Granger of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., said at a news conference.
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