An unlikely set of clues helps reconstruct ancient Chinese disasters
Text settings Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only Learn more Minimize to nav 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…
