Pictured: Emporer Wang circa 11 AD
Honestly amazing that they managed to become a cradle of civilization with such a capricious river as the centerpiece. Maybe the devastating floods were just frequent enough to make people organize to mitigate the shortcomings, without being enough to completely wipe them out.
The Yangtze likely played a big role (In my poorly educated opinion). It’s far more reliable than the yellow river and likely provided a more stable ecosystem from which early people would learn to live with, and make use of, the yellow river despite its volitility.
You’d think so, but according to Wikipedia it was both, and the Yellow river is definitely the more prominent one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_River_civilization
Huh, neat, I wonder why. I really gotta read more about Chinese “pre-history”
AFAIK it’s the gigantic sediment load plus the wind sediments from the Loess plateau, which makes the area exceptionally fertile.
