考古發現大洪水證據 夏朝存在或非神話

Scientists have found evidence of a catastrophic flood that overwhelmed the upper Yellow River valley in China some 4,000 years ago, an event that they say may confirm the historical basis of China’s semi-legendary first dynasty.

科學家已經找到了約4000年前黃河上游地區被一場特大洪水淹沒的證據，他們說這一事件或許爲半傳奇色彩的首箇中國王朝提供了歷史依據。

Ancient Chinese texts record a mix of historical events and legends. Some records, such as those relating to China’s second and third dynasties, were confirmed in surprising detail when archaeologists turned up inscriptions on oracle bones and ancient bronzes.

中國古籍中記載着各種各樣的歷史事件和傳奇。當考古學家破解了甲骨和古代青銅器上的銘文時，有些記錄——比如與中國的第二個及第三個朝代有關的那些——得到了極爲翔實的佐證。

But records of the first dynasty, that of the Xia, contain stories of a Great Flood with a Noah-like savior, the Emperor Yu, who gained the mandate of heaven after dredging canals to dispel the floodwaters and make the land safe. Historians have long wondered whether this flood account was a creation-style myth, the folk memory of a real event, or some mixture of the two. Some have dismissed the story of Emperor Yu as a fiction intended to justify centralized rule and, in the absence of any evidence of a massive flood at the time, many have regarded the stories of the Xia dynasty as more myth than history.

但關於中國第一個朝代夏朝的記錄，涉及一場大洪水以及諾亞般的救世主禹帝的故事，在疏通河道，驅退洪水，保一方平安後，他受天命成爲帝王。歷史學家一直想要弄清，關於這場洪水的記載到底是創世神話還是一場真實事件的民間記憶，又或者是兩者兼而有之。一些人把關於禹帝的故事斥爲旨在爲中央集權統治辯護的虛構作品。此外，由於當時缺乏能證明發生過大洪水的證據，許多人都把關於夏朝的故事當成傳說而非歷史來看待。

A team of archaeologists and geologists led by Qinglong Wu of Peking University in Beijing has now discovered evidence of a massive flood that they say could be the Great Flood mentioned in the Chinese annals.

由北京大學的吳慶龍領導的一個考古學家和地質學家團隊，現在已經找到發生過一場大規模洪水的證據，他們說這可能就是一些中國史書提到的那場大洪水。

The setting for the flood was a landslide, caused by an earthquake, that planted a massive natural dam across the Yellow River where it travels through the Jishi Gorge after emerging from the Tibetan plateau. To judge from the remaining sidewalls, the researchers wrote in Friday’s issue of Science, the dam would have risen some 800 feet above the river’s present level.

洪水之所以發生，是因爲地震引起山體滑坡，形成了一道橫跨黃河的巨型天然堤壩，從青藏高原流過來的黃河水，本應在那裏穿過積石峽。研究人員在週五發表於《科學》(Science)雜誌的文章中稱，從現存的側壁判斷，那道堤壩比黃河當前的水位高出約800英尺（約合240米）。

For six to nine months, Dr. Wu’s team estimates, the river ceased to flow as water accumulated in the new lake behind the dam. Then, as the water overtopped the dam’s crest, the dam rapidly gave way, releasing up to 3.8 cubic miles of water, one of the largest known floods in the last 10,000 years. The outburst flood wave could have traveled as far as 1,250 miles downstream, breaking the river’s natural banks, causing extensive flooding and even making the Yellow River switch course.

據吳慶龍的團隊推測，在6至9個月裏，黃河完全被堵塞，河水都匯聚在壩體後邊新形成的堰塞湖裏。接着，壩體在湖水漫過壩頂之際迅速潰決，釋放了最多可達3.8立方英里（約合15.8立方公里）的湖水，這是過去一萬年以來已知的規模最大的洪水之一。潰壩洪水可能向下遊奔涌了1250英里（約合2000公里）之遠，沖毀了黃河的天然河岸，令許多地方被淹，甚至導致了黃河改道。

Floods are often hard to date. But the same earthquake that dammed the river provided a date by destroying a village called Lajia some 16 miles downstream. Fissures caused by the earthquake are completely filled with sediment from the outburst flood, with no annual deposit of the windblown earth that is common in the region, which means the flood occurred the same year as the earthquake, Dr. Wu’s team says.

洪水通常是很難定年的。但是造成黃河堵塞的那場地震還摧毀了下游約16英里處的喇家村，這就提供了關於時間的信息。地震造成的裂隙裏，填滿了來自潰壩洪水的沉積物，但卻看不到當地典型的風成土堆積，吳慶龍的團隊說，這意味着洪水和地震是在同一年發生的。

Radiocarbon dating of the bones of three children killed by the earthquake establish that the event took place around 1920 B.C.

用放射性碳測年法對在地震中喪生的三名兒童的遺骸進行檢測後，研究者確定洪水大約發生在公元前1920年。

The date offers a striking temporal link to the Xia dynasty which, if it existed, is thought to have begun at this time. A modern Chinese chronology project sets the beginning of the dynasty at 2070 B.C. Even closer, two scholars working from Chinese astronomical records — a statement that there was a close conjunction of five planets early in the reign of the Emperor Yu — have calculated that the dynasty began in 1914 B.C.

該日期與夏朝有着明顯的時間上的聯繫，有人認爲，如果夏朝存在的話，應該就是在這一時期建立的。根據中國當代的一項斷代工程，夏朝始於公元前2070年。有一個說法還要更接近，兩名學者通過研究中國的天文記錄——據記載在禹帝統治初期，出現過一次五大行星會聚的現象——得出結論，夏朝始於公元前1914年。

Chinese annals record that Emperor Yu contrived a recovery from the Great Flood by dredging drainage canals rather than trying to repair breaches in the Yellow River’s dikes, as his predecessor had done. He also laid the foundations for the Chinese civilization that followed by specifying which regions should send tribute. The place where he began his operations is recorded as Jishi, which has the same Chinese characters as that of the gorge where the landslide dam occurred.

據中國史書記載，禹帝是通過疏通河道成功治水的，而不是像他的前任那樣，試圖修復黃河堤岸的決口。他還爲華夏文明奠定了基礎，並對各地的進貢做出了規定。據記載，大禹治水的起點是“積石”，與曾有滑坡壩存在的那個峽谷同名。

Dr. Wu’s team said its reconstruction of the outburst flood from the Jishi Gorge showed that the ancient textual accounts of the Great Flood “may well be rooted in a historic natural event.” The finding also supports the idea, the researchers say, that archaeological remains found at Erlitou, a site about 1,550 miles downstream from the gorge, may have been the Xia capital, given that the Erlitou culture dates to 1900 B.C., the same time as the Jishi Gorge flood.

吳慶龍的團隊表示，他們對積石峽洪水的模擬重現顯示出，古代對大洪水的描述“很可能是基於歷史上的一個自然事件”。研究人員表示，這個發現也支持了這樣一種觀念：考慮到二里頭文化可以追溯至公元前1900年，與積石峽大洪水爆發的時間吻合，所以位於積石峽下游約1550英里處的考古發現二里頭遺址，有可能就是夏朝的首都。

But historians may require more evidence before signing on to the team’s thesis. It is not so clear how a folk memory of the flood could have been accurately maintained for at least 900 years, as Dr. Wu’s team suggested, given that elements in the texts may begin as early as 1,000 years ago. There were probably many floods, which may have been conflated in popular memory, said Sarah Allan, a historian of ancient China at Dartmouth College. In her view, the Great Flood described in the ancient texts is a myth to explain how the world was made, not a historical event.

不過，歷史學家們需要更多的證據才能採納該團隊的這一假設。目前還不太清楚，有關一場大洪水的民間記憶如何能像吳慶龍的團隊所認爲的那樣，被精確地維持了至少900年，因爲文字記載的事可能是1000年前發生的。美國達特茅斯學院(Dartmouth College)研究古代中國的歷史學家艾蘭(Sarah Allan)表示，可能爆發過多次洪水，它們在大衆記憶中被混淆了。在她看來，古書中描述的大洪水是一個解釋世界如何形成的神話，而不是一個歷史事件。

“The story begins with water everywhere and the problem is how to make the world habitable,” she said. Even if the myth was centered on a real event, it is a reach to associate this with the Jishi Gorge flood or the flood with the Erlitou culture, she said.

“這個故事的開頭講到世界上到處都是水，當時的問題是如何讓這個世界變得適於人類居住，”她說。她還表示，即便神話是基於一個真實的事件，也不見得就能與積石峽洪水或二里頭文化中的洪水聯繫起來。

Paul Goldin, who studies China’s Warring States period at the University of Pennsylvania, also sees the stories of Yu and the Great Flood as unlikely to represent historical events. And they date mostly to the fourth century B.C., long after the Jishi Gorge flood. “These are relatively late legends that were propagated for philosophical and political reasons, and it’s inherently questionable to suppose that they represent some dim memory of the past,” he said.

在賓夕法尼亞大學(University of Pennsylvania)研究戰國曆史的金鵬程(Paul Goldin)也認爲，大禹和大洪水的故事不太可能是對歷史事件的描述。這些故事大多追溯到公元前四世紀，而積石峽洪水發生的時間要早得多。“這些是比較晚一些的傳說，因一些哲學和政治因素被傳播開來，去假定它們描繪了過去的一些模糊記憶，本身就是有問題的，”他說。

Dr. Goldin remarked on a “kind of fixation” in Chinese archaeology “to prove all the ancient texts and legends have some fundamental truth, which is an overreaction to an earlier period when they were rejected as myth. It shouldn’t be every archaeologist’s first instinct to see if their findings are matched in the historical sources,” he said.

金鵬程談到了中國考古界的一種“執迷”，即他們試圖“證明所有的古老文本和傳說都有一些基本的真實性。這是對此前一段時間它們被貶爲神話的一種過激反應。考古學家的第一反應不應該是去探究自己的發現是否與史料匹配，”他說。

The Jishi Gorge flood occurred at a pivotal time in Chinese history, the boundary between the Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age that followed. Dr. Wu’s team said at a news conference on Wednesday that the story of Yu taming the flood represents the emergence of a new political order. The archaeological record shows some sort of a decline, as would be expected after a great catastrophe, followed in the Bronze Age, first seen in the Erlitou culture, by new levels of development, a large increase in the size of cities, the development of writing and workshops manufacturing bronze.

積石峽洪水發生在中國歷史上一個關鍵的時期，介於新石器時代和之後的青銅器時代之間。吳慶龍的團隊在週三舉行的一場新聞發佈會上表示，大禹治水的故事代表一種新的政治秩序的出現。從考古紀錄可以看到某種衰落，在一場大災難之後，這是可以想象的，到了青銅器時代，發展達到了一個新的層次，最早可見於二里頭文化，城市規模大幅增加，文字以及製造青銅器的作坊得到發展。

“If they can show some kind of connection in the archaeological record between the Jishi Gorge flood and the emergence of a culture like Erlitou, that would be a major improvement of our understanding of history,” Dr. Goldin said.

“如果他們能在考古記錄中展現積石峽洪水和二里頭等文化的出現之間存在某種聯繫，那將大大提升我們對歷史的理解，”金鵬程說。