Geologist Speculates on Disappearance of Sanxingdui

Archaeology Magazine ^ | Christmas, Thursday, December 25, 2014 | editor

[SunkenCiv]

Niannian Fan, a river sciences researcher at Tsinghua University in Chengdu, China, presented new thoughts on the disappearance of the Sanxingdui culture from a walled city on the banks of China's Minjiang River some 3,000 years ago, at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "The current explanations for why it disappeared are war and flood, but both are not very convincing," Fan told Live Science. In the 1980s, scientists found two pits of broken Bronze Age jades, elephant tusks, and bronze sculptures. Similar artifacts have been found nearby at another ancient city known as Jinsha. Did the people of Sanxingdui relocate to Jinsha? Fan thinks that the epicenter of an earthquake recorded to have occurred in 1099 B.C. some 250 miles away may have actually been close to Sanxingdui. Geological clues in the mountains suggest that a major earthquake triggered a landslide that dammed the river, reduced the water to Sanxingdui, and rerouted its flow to Jinsha. Later documents tell of floods that support the idea that the flow was rerouted.

[SunkenCiv]

The seismometer that Zhang Heng invented in 132 AD was an urn with some type of pendulum apparatus contained within it. We don't know the exact mechanics because they were lost in history. The pendulum was extremely sensitive to vibration. When it swung it released a ball from the mouth of one of eight dragons and the ball fell into the mouth of a patiently waiting frog. The loud clang that resulted notified attendants of some sort of seismological event. It is said that one day the ball fell but people in the court felt nothing. A few days later a runner arrived from a village 400 miles away to inform the Emperor that his area had been devastated by an earthquake. While Zhang Heng's seismograph couldn't predict a quake it could notify the court when one occurred so that aid could be sent.

[SunkenCiv]

[ExCTCitizen]

Maybe Jinsha had a problem with illegals...and they failed also. Did Jinsha give out free handouts to them?

[wildbill]

A very cool invention.

[SunkenCiv]

I wholeheartedly agree. The memory of a drawing of it came back to me while reading the Sanxingdui article.

[SunkenCiv]

Before today, I thought jinsha was a kind of sushi.

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 12/26/2014. Tiny little catastrophe (river rerouted by earthquake).

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• Mystery of ancient Chinese civilization's disappearance explained [2014]
• The Mysterious Ancient Artifacts of Sanxingdui That Have Rewritten Chinese History [2014]
• Striking Gold (Archaeology - China) [2007]
• 3000 Year-Old Jinsha Coming To Life [2007]
• China: Archeologists shake up history(Jinsha Ruins, Sanxingdui Culture) [2005]
• Unmasking Sanxingdui Ruins [2004]