Natural Disasters and the Development of Chinese History

Abstract

1 The Relation of Severe Natural Disasters to Political and Social life Natural disasters are the common enemy of all human beings, who have tenaciously struggled against all kinds of natural disasters to develop themselves. China has always been dogged by disasters, owing to its vast territory, complex geographical conditions, and varying climatic conditions. Contemporary disaster-science researchers in China believe that there have been four major periods of disasters in China’s history, namely, the Xia Yu Cosmic Period 夏禹宇宙期, Two Hans Cosmic Period 两汉宇宙期, Ming-Qing Cosmic Period 明清宇宙期, and Late Qing Cosmic Period 清末宇宙期.1 The fi rst period, the Xia Yu Cosmic Period, also known as Xia Yu Flood Period 夏禹洪水期, spanned about 400 years roughly from 2010 to 1610 BCE. According to records in the pre-Qin literature, the legendary King Yu 禹王 tamed the fl oods in this period. The important environmental changes in the late Neolithic Period have become a focal point of research on early Chinese civilization. According to one study by Chinese scholars, “A series of geological, meteorological, astronomical, and cultural anomalies reveal that the period around 2000 BCE was a period of cooling, great fl oods, earthquakes, and a great cultural shift in the context of astronomical anomalies. All this indubitably confi rmed that the Xia Yu Flood Period around 4,000 years ago was a period of concurrent natural disasters, as well as an abnormal period in the history of Chinese culture and an important cultural fault and