Academic criticism named “Multiple evidences don’t support the conjecture of China's Great Flood at 1920 BCE” written by LZU’s Prof. Dong Guanghui et al. were published on Science’s website in its e-letter column. Since the control of Great Flood in prehistorical time may have generated the Chinese civilization, this criticism will exert great influence on the study in the field. The journal of SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences has approved Prof. Dong to organize special edition to probe into the issue, so as to upgrade China’s overall study with regards to the relation between natural disasters and civilization evolution by academic debate.
The abstract of the above academic criticism is as follows:
China’s historiographical traditions tell of the successful control of a Great Flood leading to the establishment of the Xia dynasty and the beginning of civilization. However, the historicity of the flood and Xia remain controversial. Here, we reconstruct an earthquake-induced landslide dam outburst flood on the Yellow River about 1920 BCE that ranks as one of the largest freshwater floods of the Holocene and could account for the Great Flood. This would place the beginning of Xia at ~1900 BCE, several centuries later than traditionally thought. This date coincides with the major transition from the Neolithic to Bronze Age in the Yellow River valley and supports hypotheses that the primary state-level society of the Erlitou culture is an archaeological manifestation of the Xia dynasty.
Related Links：
Wu et al., 2016, Science:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6299/579.full
Dong et al., 2016, Science e-letter:
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6299/579.e-letters#xref-fn-2-1
(Translated by Zhang Lu; proofread by Xing Tingting)
