How climate change led to demise of once-thriving Chinese civilisation 4,500 years ago
New research paints a picture of a culture that struggled to navigate a significant increase in rainfall and slowly disappeared from history
If one were to travel to central China, in what is now Hubei province, 4,500 years ago, they might have been fortunate enough to discover a vibrant civilisation characterised by palaces, advanced engineering, and luxuries such as jade.
However, in the generations that followed, this culture gradually declined, with its people dispersing across the region.
Until now, the reasons behind the collapse of such a thriving civilisation were not well understood. A group of scientists now believe that the Shijiahe civilisation, which flourished along the middle Yangtze River from 2500 to 2000 BC, was ultimately undone by climate change, specifically a dramatic increase in flooding that rendered the region uninhabitable for any society.
Professor Gideon Henderson from Oxford University noted in a statement that the insights into Shijiahe culture provided by lead author Dr Jin Liao from the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan allowed the team to illustrate how climate change affected Shijiahe societies.
He said the collaboration “enabled us to demonstrate, for one of the first times, that high rain can cause problems for past societies, as well as drought conditions.”
The team analysed data from a stalagmite in Heshang Cave in Hubei province, which, due to its low nutrient levels, has become a critical resource for reconstructing ancient climate models.
The Oxford researchers collected chemical data from layers of a stalagmite in the cave to create a “rainfall yearbook.” They gathered 925 samples from a thousand-year period that coincided with the existence of the Shijiahe civilisation.
Their findings revealed that the region experienced an extreme environmental and cultural shift around 3,950 years ago, which coincided with the year of the heaviest rainfall recorded in their climate yearbook.