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.
Comment on The Chad lake stabilized flood pattern vs the virgin high sediment variable course flood "pattern"
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
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.
sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
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
- sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Huh, neat, I wonder why. I really gotta read more about Chinese “pre-history”
rumschlumpel@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
AFAIK it’s the gigantic sediment load plus the wind sediments from the Loess plateau, which makes the area exceptionally fertile.
ShyBeluga@lemmy.zip 4 days ago
People in their society were tasked with measuring the floods. Doing this made it possible to predict the next flood, with enough data of course. They used Nilometers to measure this. A well with stairs built into the Nile. If it was high, they knew trouble was on the way, same thing if it was low. They had a sweet spot that produced the best harvests. Really cool stuff.