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Prehistoric damaging earthquake promoted the decline of “Heluo Ancient State” in Early China

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Abstract

The emergence of the “Ancient State” is considered an important stage in the discourse on human civilizations. Based on its complex and hierarchical social structure, the Shuanghuaishu site of Henan Province is regarded as an “Ancient state”, specifically the “Heluo Ancient State”. The site is situated in the middle reaches of the Yellow River region and played a key role in prehistoric China. However, the reasons behind its decline are unclear. Here, we conducted an integrated investigation of the archaeological excavations and archaeoseismic analyses at the Shuanghuaishu site. We identified paleoseismic remains within paleo-artificial moats, which were formed owing to off-fault structures of soil liquefaction, hillslope landslides, and related ground fractures, along with shake-related wall disruption and building collapse in the residential zone. Charcoal dating was conducted to constrain the age for this earthquake event, which was determined to be approximately 5.0 cal kyr BP. Furthermore, based on the practical curve for earthquake-induced liquefaction, the preliminary estimate of the magnitude of this paleoseismic event is greater than Ms5.9–6.0. We propose that the Shuanghuaishu site experienced a recession after the earthquake event, which may have influenced the continuous development of the “Heluo Ancient State” as a regional center settlement.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments in earlier versions of this manuscript. This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (Grant No. 2020YFC1521605), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41971002, 41971016, 41671014 and U2039201), the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 19ZDA227), the Study of Environment Archaeology in Zhengzhou, the Digital Environment Archaeology Specially-appointed Researcher of Henan, China (Grant No. 210501002), the Science and Technology Open Cooperation Project (Grant No. 210901006), and the Science and Technology Think-Tank Project of Henan Academy of Sciences (Grant No. 210701002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Urban and Environmental Science, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, China

    Xiu Hu, Youli Li, Duowen Mo, Qingri Liu, Ailun Guo & Quanxing Luo

  2. Institute of Geography, Henan Academy of Sciences, Zhengzhou, 450052, China

    Peng Lu, Panpan Chen, Yan Tian & Zhen Wang

  3. Zhengzhou Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Zhengzhou, 450000, China

    Wanfa Gu, Xu Wang, Yayi Hu & Jiqin Zhang

  4. The Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, 100710, China

    Hui Wang

  5. College of History, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, 450000, China

    Junjie Xu

  6. School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, 510275, China

    Xiu Hu

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  1. Xiu Hu
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Hu, X., Lu, P., Li, Y. et al. Prehistoric damaging earthquake promoted the decline of “Heluo Ancient State” in Early China. Sci. China Earth Sci. 66, 1120–1132 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-022-1027-1

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