Dikes find dates back more than 5,000 years
Print Edition
CHINESE archeologists have discovered a water project dating back about 5,000 years in east China’s Zhejiang Province.
The find, which includes 11 dikes, is on the outskirts of provincial capital Hangzhou, and is the oldest large water system to have been found in China.
It is believed to have combined the functions of flood control, transport and irrigation.
The dikes are near the ancient city of Liangzhu that existed about 4,500 to 5,300 years ago and was discovered in 2007 in Hangzhou’s Yuhang District.
Between July last year and this January, archeologists excavated three of the 11 dikes, identifying pottery shards of the Liangzhu Culture, said lead researcher Wang Ningyuan of the provincial institute of cultural relics and archaeology.
A “mound” excavated between 1996 and 2010 has now been identified as a dike.
Carbon-dating on construction materials — straw and bamboo — taken from the dikes showed the site to be between 4,700 and 5,100 years old.
High dikes erected along the mountains and low ones linking the mountains may have formed three reservoirs, one apparently covering 9.4 square kilometers — about 1.5 times the area and four times the volume of Hangzhou’s West Lake.
Liu Jianguo, of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said of the dikes: “Maybe our ancestors designed them to counter typhoons that brought torrential rain.”
A group of senior archeologists visited the dikes over the weekend. Professor Xu Shijin of Nanjing University speculated that one important purpose of the dikes was to water paddy fields, as poor yields at the time required large-scale planting.
“There were many craftsmen who made jade articles in Liangzhu 5,000 years ago, so they needed a large amount of grain,” Xu said.
Liangzhu culture is well-known for its jade.
Researchers said work should continue to identify spillways and ditches and called for better protection of the site.
Professor Zhao Hui of Peking University said the discovery indicated that the settlement at Liangzhu was highly advanced.
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