Scientists discover new evidence of massive flood in ancient China

Scientists have discovered evidence of a massive flood that occurred in China 4,000 years ago. The evidence conforms to ancient Chinese flood legend about the founding of China's first dynasty. An international team of scientists gathered fossils, rocks and ancient text to find out whether the physical evidence holds up to early historical texts.

According to the legend, Emperor Yu was given a heavenly mandate to rule when he made the floodwaters recede by constructed ditches. For Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, this story is just one of many flood legends. "Whether it's the American Indians or the Fijians, Hawaiians, the Eskimos, Australian Aborigines ... back to the Babylonians, there are flood legends in cultures all over the world," Ham said in an interview with One News Now.

"There are thousands of feet of Flood sediment all over the globe – evidence of a catastrophic global Flood," Ham further claimed. Ham says that the scientists are not prepared to look at the evidence of the global flood because they were "indoctrinated to believe that that was laid down over millions of years."

A paper published in Science journal on Aug. 5 presents evidence that a great flood occurred in 1900 B.C. coinciding with the beginning of the Xia dynasty. The scientists have been working on the scientific paper about Emperor Yu's flood since 2007. Qingwei Sun considers the study "groundbreaking" but explained that they need more data before their findings are widely accepted.

Qinglong Wu, geologist and the paper's lead author, first investigated the Jishi Gorge while working as a postdoc at the China Earthquake Administration's Institute of Geology in Beijing. Wu had to keep quiet at first when he thought that his discoveries from his investigations could be a basis for China's great flood.

"I didn't tell others because it would invite laughter," he told the Science journal. Wu admitted that the paper could be controversial for the scientific community but the team agreed that they still need further study.