Repeated Palaeofloods of 8.2–6.4 ka and Coeval Rise of Neonatal Culture in the Upper Yangtze River, China

Abstract

Flood events have long been very frequent along the Yangtze River in Chongqing, China. A complete sedimentary sequence of alluvia, found in the Yuxi profile (YXP) was applied to explore features of the palaeoflood layers that maintained records related to the contexts of flooding hydroclimate. The AMS14C dating results dependent on animal bones from the YXP validate that the chronology of the palaeoflood layers was dated, between ca. 8200 and 6400 a BP, and multiple cultural layers were intercut among these palaeoflood layers. By means of particle size and end-member analyses for the palaeoflood sediments, the fractions of fine silt and clay in deposits account for a high proportion of the flood sediments, suggesting that the overbank flood was the main power in building the palaeoflood layers. Due to the climatic episodes defined by pollen assemblages, the thickness of the flood layers is positively correlated with soil erosion because of different hydrothermal conditions. The wavelet spectra of the mean particle-size series also suggest that there may be two major palaeoflooding cycles of ~700 and ~30 years. Despite the sustained palaeoflooding, the Yuxi Culture grew from small to big, and was never broken off, in terms of the findings of artificial remains in the YXP.