Jianghan Plain, the locale of China’s Great Flood four thousand years ago

Abstract

Abstract The Yellow River Plain (YRP), being regarded as the cradle of Chinese civilization, is traditionally thought to be the locale of the Great Flood, a hazardous flood (or floods) tamed by Yu who started China’s first “dynasty”, Xia, at ~ 2000 BC. However, by integrating published archaeological data, we propose that the Great Flood in fact impacted the Jianghan Plain (JHP) along the middle course of the Yangtze River. The arguments include: (1) around the era of the Great Flood, the most civilized and populated society in East Asia, named the Jianghan society, was located around the JHP (then the habitation on the YRP remained limited); (2) the Jianghan society lived on river resources (e.g., shipping and rice growing) and was thus subject to flood risks; (3) the people in the Jianghan society were experienced in dredging moats/ditches for shipping and irrigation; (4) unlike the floods on the YRP that were characterized by dynamic sedimentation and channel avulsion, those on the margin of the JHP typically occurred with slow-moving water predictable in space. Here, the recorded method to contain the Great Flood, dredging channels to divert flood water, was feasible. By examining published speleothem paleo-rainfall data from multiple sites, we confirm that the JHP was dominated by a wet condition with frequent rainfall events since middle Holocene, which significantly turned dry after ~ 1850 BC. Given this, the uniqueness of the Great Flood and its impact are likely to have reflected an increase in land use on the JHP associated with the expansion of the Jianghan society, and the success in taming this flood was mainly due to the efforts of the society, not by luck.