Liangzhu
A jade-working society in the Yangtze delta builds a dam system and then drowns.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 1 thousand years
- Known to
- ± 100 years
- Era
- Bronze Age, Holocene
Liangzhu, from around 3300 BCE, produces enormous quantities of finely worked jade — cong tubes and bi discs whose manufacture without metal tools remains partly unexplained — inside a walled city with a hydraulic system of dams and levees far larger than anything contemporary. It ends abruptly around 2300 BCE, and sediment studies point to catastrophic flooding, possibly linked to the same 4.2 kiloyear climate anomaly seen across Eurasia.