Warmer waters in the Pacific Ocean may have brought devastating floods to the cradle of ancient Chinese civilization, according to a recent study in which its authors link three wildly different lines of evidence to tell the story.
People in Shang Dynasty China, around 3,000 years ago, probably didn’t realize that the massive floods sweeping through their heartland were the product of typhoons battering the southern Chinese coast hundreds of kilometers away. They certainly couldn’t have seen that the sheer intensity of those typhoons was fueled by a sudden shift in temperature cycles over the Pacific Ocean thousands of kilometers to the south and east. But, with the benefit of 3,000 years of hindsight and scientific progress, Nanjing University meteorologist Ke Ding and colleagues recently managed to connect the dots. The results are like a handwritten warning from the Shang Dynasty about how to prepare for modern climate change.
Typhoons, oracle bones, and abandoned settlements
Around 3,000 years ago, two great civilizations were flourishing in central China. In the Yellow River Valley, the Shang Dynasty rose to prominence, producing the first Chinese writing and also sacrificing thousands of people in ceremonies at the capital, Yinxu. Meanwhile, on the Chengdu Plain in southwestern China, the Shanxingdui culture built a walled capital city and sculpted large bronze heads, gold foil masks, and tools of jade and ivory, which they buried in huge sacrificial pits.
