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Archeological data with AI- and physics-based modeling explain typhoon-induced disasters in inland China around 3000 yr B.P.
Science Advances, 12.10 (3/4/25)
Ke Ding, Siyang Li, Aijun Ding, Houyuan Lu, Jianping Zhang, Dazhi Xi, Xin Huang, Sijia Lou, Xiaodong Tang, Xin Qiu, Lejun He, Yue Ma, Haoxian Lin, Shiyan Zhang, Derong Zhou, Xiaolu Zhou, Zhe-Min Tan, Congbin Fu, Quansheng Ge

To fully understand the significance of this paper, one must realize that the Central Plains (Zhōngyuán 中原) and Chengdu Plain in Sichuan are crucial, fertile agricultural and economic hubs with deep historical significance. The Central Plains served as the "cradle of Chinese civilization", and was a vital transport corridor in the East Asian Heartland (EAH). The Chengdu Plain has been a perennial "Land of Plenty", supported by the Dūjiāngyàn 都江堰 irrigation system, a miracle of ancient hydraulic engineering still operating today more than two millennia after it was constructed.

Abstract

Climate change–related extreme events during the mid-late Holocene, especially around 3000 years before the present (yr B.P.), severely threatened human survival and cultural development at various locations. However, although marked social change during this period in China have also been reported to coincide with extreme disasters, the causes and impacts of these events remain unclear. Here, we aligned paleoclimate reconstructions with quantitative analyses of archeological evidence, including oracle bone scripts, together with artificial intelligence– and physics-based model simulations to uncover the causes. We found that intensified typhoon activities exerted considerable impacts on climate extremes and social change in inland China around 3000 yr B.P. These findings underscore the urgent need to improve preparedness for today’s typhoon-induced disasters in the context of accelerating climate change.

Introduction

…

In this study, we quantitatively examined the weather-related written records in ~55,000 pieces of oracle bone scripts (3200 to 2996 yr B.P.), the earliest form of systematic Chinese writing (14–15), and developed several indexes representing the climate conditions during ~200 years in the Late Shang Dynasty.

Usage advisory from VHM

For the last few years, I've been noticing that Chinese archeologists and scientists publishing in English consistently refer to 甲骨文 as "oracle bone scripts" (note the plural), when I think they mean "oracle bone inscriptions" or "oracle bone texts".

I'm wondering if I should make an attempt to correct this usage, or whether it is so well entrenched in Sino-English that nothing can be done to change it.

Oracle bone scripts, the earliest form of systematic Chinese writing, were mostly found in AY in the Central Plains and generally considered as divination records of royalty and nobility in the Late Shang Dynasty (14–15, 36). Therefore, besides being recognized as invaluable cultural relics, oracle bone scripts also serve as precious contemporaneous documentation of people and their circumstances during the Chinese Bronze Age (37–38). Consistent with that revealed in the relevant geological and archeological records, oracle bone scripts also suggest a considerable influence of climate extremes, especially floods, during the Late Shang Dynasty (8, 39–41). A typical example can be seen in Fig. 2A; one of the main characters representing “disaster” in oracle bone scripts is a pattern resembling water waves, which indicates floods according to existing studies (42).

This is Fig. 2A of the article:

The authors claim that the three wavy lines near the top resemble water waves, which indicates "floods", hence "disaster".  I wonder about that.

They also post He27219 and say that it means "[upcoming] heavy rain".  It looks like this OB character for rain:

Is there a special character for "heavy rain"?

Judging from the paper as it appears in Science Advances examined here, it does not seem to me that the authors have made productive use of the oracle bone evidence.  It was a good idea for them to attempt to take the large amount of references to rainfall on the OBIs* (Oracle Bone Inscriptions) into account, but they only tell us how often the rains fell, not how much fell.  At least, that's all the information I can obtain from the data proffered.

—–

*For many years, I translated jiǎgǔwén 甲骨文 as "oracle shell and bone inscriptions" (abbreviated as OSBIs), until specialists in the field talked me out of it by telling me that turtle plastrons are also a kind of bone.

Selected readings

• "German English" (3/8/26)
• "Submissive woman or bound slave: interpreting oracle bone forms as a Rorschach test" (2/20/26)
• "Font making for oracle bone inscription studies" (9/18/24)
• "Nomadic affinity with oracle bone divination" (11/25/20)
• Victor H. Mair, "The Case of the Wayward Oracle Bone", Expedition Magazine, 43.2 (2001).

March 12, 2026 @ 12:20 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Artificial intelligence, Language and archeology

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