Wang_QSR_2018.pdf (7.07 MB)
Middle Holocene marine flooding and human response in the south Yangtze coastal plain, East China
journal contribution
posted on 2018-04-11, 08:22 authored by Zhanghua Wang, David RyvesDavid Ryves, Shao Lei, Xiaomei Nian, Ye Lv, Liang Tang, Long Wang, Jiehua Wang, Jie [Shanghai Museum] ChenCoastal flooding catastrophes have affected human societies on coastal plains around the world on several occasions in the past, and are threatening 21st century societies under global warming and sea-level rise. However, the role of coastal flooding in the interruption of the Neolithic Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze valley, East China coast has been long contested. In this study, we used a well-dated Neolithic site (the Yushan site) close to the present coastline to demonstrate a marine drowning event at the terminal stage of the Liangzhu culture and discuss its linkage to relative sea-level rise. We analysed sedimentology, chronology, organic elemental composition, diatoms and dinoflagellate cysts for several typical profiles at the Yushan site. The field and sedimentary data provided clear evidence of a palaeo-typhoon event that overwhelmed the Yushan site at ∼2560 BCE, which heralded a period of marine inundation and ecological deterioration at the site. We also infer an acceleration in sea-level rise at 2560–2440 BCE from the sedimentary records at Yushan, which explains the widespread signatures of coastal flooding across the south Yangtze coastal plain at that time. The timing of this mid-Holocene coastal flooding coincided with the sudden disappearance of the advanced and widespread Liangzhu culture along the lower Yangtze valley. We infer that extreme events and flooding accompanying accelerated sea-level rise were major causes of vulnerability for prehistoric coastal societies.
Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41576042).
History
Department
- Geography and Environment
Published in
Quaternary Science ReviewsVolume
187Pages
80-93Citation
WANG, Z. ... et al, 2018. Middle Holocene marine flooding and human response in the south Yangtze coastal plain, East China. Quaternary Science Reviews, 187, pp.80-93.Publisher
© ElsevierVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Acceptance date
2018-03-04Publication date
2018-03-30Copyright date
2018Notes
This paper was published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2018.03.001.ISSN
0277-3791Publisher version
Language
- en