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Article

Disasters and Society: Comparing the Shang and Mycenaean Response to Natural Phenomena through Text and Archaeology

by
Alexander Jan Dimitris Westra
1,2,3,*,
Changhong Miao
1,
Ioannis Liritzis
1 and
Manolis Stefanakis
2
1
Laboratory of Yellow River Cultural Heritage, Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization, Henan University, Kaifeng 475001, China
2
Department of Mediterranean Studies, University of the Aegean, 81100 Mytilene, Greece
3
Chercheur Associé au Laboratoire ArScAn|Archéologie de l’Asie Centrale-UMR 7041, Université Paris Nanterre, Ministère de la Culture, 92000 Paris, France
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Quaternary 2022, 5(3), 33; https://doi.org/10.3390/quat5030033
Submission received: 15 June 2022 / Revised: 8 July 2022 / Accepted: 13 July 2022 / Published: 25 July 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Geoarchaeology and Cultural Heritage)
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Abstract

:
Disasters do and have happened throughout human existence. Their traces are found in the environmental record, archaeological evidence, and historical chronicles. Societal responses to these events vary and depend on ecological and cultural constraints and opportunities. These elements are being discovered more and more on a global scale. When looking at disasters in antiquity, restoring the environmental and geographical context on both the macro- and microscale is necessary. The relationships between global climatic processes and microgeographical approaches ought to be understood by examining detailed societal strategies conceived in response to threatening natural phenomena. Architectural designs, human geography, political geography, technological artefacts, and textual testimony are linked to a society’s inherited and real sense of natural threats, such as floods, earthquakes, fires, diseases, etc. The Shang and Mycenaean cultures are prime examples, among others, of Bronze Age societies with distinctive geographical, environmental, and cultural features and structures that defined their attitudes and responses to dangerous natural phenomena, such as floods, earthquakes, landslides, and drought. By leaning on two well-documented societies with little to no apparent similarities in environmental and cultural aspects and no credible evidence of contact, diffusion, or exchange, we can examine them free of the onus of diffused intangible and tangible cultural features. Even though some evidence of long-distance networks in the Bronze Age exists, they presumable had no impact on local adaptive strategies. The Aegean Sea and Yellow River cultural landscapes share many similarities and dissimilarities and vast territorial and cultural expansions. They have an apparent contemporaneity, and both recede and collapse at about the same time. Thus, through the microgeography of a few select Shang and Mycenaean sites and their relevant environmental, archaeological, and historical contexts, and through environmental effects on a global scale, we may understand chain events of scattered human societal changes, collapses, and revolutions on a structural level.

1. Introduction

The manner of human interaction within a geographical area is determined by a series of cultural processes where the very geography of the location limits the evolution and layers of cultural values in each environmental niche. The layers of effects of structural geology, topography, climate, vegetation, hydrology on the settlements, economies, ideologies, myths, and cultures of the Aegean Sea and Yellow River regions must be included comprehensively. The Mycenaeans and Shang dealt with rivers, wetlands, dry areas, lack and excess of water, unpredictable rainfall and soil erosion, coastal environments with the background of change and fluctuations in sea level, alluvial, and river systems, and other physical phenomena tied to the exploitation of an ecological niche. However, the idea of a unified, homogeneous response to individual environmental processes and common economic strategies would be misplaced.
Natural disasters are part of an ecological niche and include droughts, plagues, storms, volcanic eruptions, landslides, meteor impact and more [1,2,3,4]. They are perennial threats to any society whose traces must be sought in the environmental, archaeological, and historical records. Archaeology and environmental archaeology recognise changes in cultural and ecological systems. It is worth noting that in a period of environmental stability and conservation, the continuous habitation of an area for centuries is equally important to recognising changes in vegetation systems, erosion phases, and other natural phenomena [5] (Figure 1). Discussions like the present one link our contemporary ecological challenges and forthcoming disasters. They shine light on the successes and failures in the management of space, the insights and misunderstandings regarding the processes of nature, and the calamities that have consistently beset organised human life, a hard lesson humanity is seemingly obstinately unable to learn, even in the face of incipient and ongoing environmental disasters.
This paper aims to demonstrate some of the key discussions revolving around natural disasters witnessed in environmental data, archaeological evidence, epigraphic evidence, and historical texts. It focuses on primary discussions regarding the Shang and Mycenaean cultures and associated natural disasters. The paper develops from intertwined sections concerning environmental archaeology and natural disasters, physical and textual evidence of destructions, mythical destructions, and disaster management, prehistoric disaster management involving technology and mythology, natural disasters that led to collapse, archaeoseismicity, which is a catalyst for collapse and resilience, the case for China coupled with protoscientific applications, religious world-views, and cosmology supported by epigraphic evidence, texts, and ideas from later periods (Table 1).
Table
Table 1. Table showing basic chronological comparison of Greece and China (dates from Bintliff, 2012; Underhill, 2013) [6,7].
Table 1. Table showing basic chronological comparison of Greece and China (dates from Bintliff, 2012; Underhill, 2013) [6,7].
GreeceChina
ca. 3200 BCEarly Bronze Age (EBA)ca. 2550–ca. 1950 BCLongshan Culture
ca. 2000/1900–ca. 1800/1700 BCMiddle Cycladic/Middle Helladicca. 2300–1500 BCQijia Culture
ca. 1800/1700–ca. 1500 BCLate Cycladic 1/Late Helladic 1ca. 1750–ca. 1200 BCSanxingdui Culture
ca. 1500–ca. 1400 BCLate Cycladic 2/Late Helladic 2ca. 1800–ca. 1450 BCYueshi Culture
ca. 1400–ca. 1250/1200 BCLate Helladic 3A-Bca. 1850–ca. 1550 BCErlitou Culture
ca. 1250/1200–ca. 1050 BCLate Helladic 3Cca. 1600–ca. 1400 BCErligang Culture/Early Shang Culture
ca. 1400–ca. 1250 BCHuanbei Culture/Middle Shang Culture
ca. 1250–1046 BCYinxu Culture/Late Shang Culture
1046–771 BCWesstern Zhou Culture
Quaternary 05 00033 g001 550
Figure 1. Approximate Mycenaean and Shang territories (Based on [8,9] (basemap free source: https://geology.com/world/asia-physical-map.shtml (access on 10 June 2022))).
Figure 1. Approximate Mycenaean and Shang territories (Based on [8,9] (basemap free source: https://geology.com/world/asia-physical-map.shtml (access on 10 June 2022))).
Quaternary 05 00033 g001

2. Disasters through the Environment and Archaeology

2.1. Environmental Archaeology and Natural Disasters

Historical ecology, related to functional anthropology, provides archaeologists with concepts for evaluating cultural evolution [4]. Within cultural zones, technology and lifeways are associated and developed with their environmental context. By extension, the decline of a civilisation can be understood as an ecological disaster caused partly by the misuse of resources and catastrophic natural phenomena. The direct correlation of catastrophic events affecting prehistoric or ancient societies, in this case, the Late Bronze Age Aegean and the middle reach of the Yellow River, with the destruction of the Mycenaean or Shang civilizations, is widely discussed [10,11].
How and who applied environmental knowledge is a crucial question, as the participation of people in environmental change is self-evident and dynamic. Handling and responding to local environments reveal timeless cultures in specific landscape contexts. Environmental processes test social endurance: drought affects the supply of food, ideological and ritual mechanisms are developed to dampen the impact, and a social memory of disasters is created, which results in questioning the ability of the ruling class to appeal to a deity to mitigate threats from the natural world. The practical problem-solving of the Shang and Mycenaeans demonstrates the empirical approach to effectively minimising the effects of earthquakes, floods, and other natural threats with different material and conceptual toolsets, as well as potential societal backlashes.
Distinguishing in the collapse of states and political units, the collapse of civilizations and ‘Great Traditions’ is not a straightforward matter. [12]. The terms ‘collapse’ and ‘fall’ are misleading, because the fragmentation of empires and states into smaller political units does not necessarily translate into a reduction in complexity [10], although in archaeology, it means a reduction in cultural and political complexity. A political collapse, i.e., the collapse or weakening of the state (political hegemony), incurs a chain reaction felt by different strata of society and is visible through archaeological evidence. However, cultures are distinct constellations of material and immaterial phenomena. Collapse does not necessarily lead to an all-out loss of complexity, customs, or the disappearance of the population [10]. Collapse on such a large scale paints historical and ecological collapses with broad strokes and reduces the lived experiences of communities as irrelevant to the continuity of larger abstract entities, such as culture, civilisation, or nations.

2.2. Physical and Textual Evidence of Destructions

For the causes of the Late Bronze Age collapse across the eastern Mediterranean, which spelt the end of the Mycenaean civilisation, a wide array of explanations have been proffered [13,14,15,16,17]. However, linking specific evidence of floods, earthquakes, or volcanic eruptions with prehistoric and legendary records remains complex and contentious, as the impacts and effects of disasters are not well understood [18]. For instance, whether the volcanic eruption on Santorini led to the sudden or gradual collapse of the Minoan civilization has been much debated since Marinatos [19]. Due to the reduced solar radiation and temperatures, the eruption’s effects may have had local, regional, and global implications [20] The lack of precise chronologies rends the broader analysis of the relationship between a geological event or catastrophic natural phenomena and broader social and cultural implications hypothetical. For the eruption of the volcano of Thera/Santorini [21,22], the proposed date is circa 1620 BC. A different constellation of natural and political events surround the Thera eruption: a specific catastrophe occur at a precise point in time whose wider environmental and historical consequences are thoroughly investigated. Despite the well-documented effects across the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean and an increasingly higher chronological resolution, the cause(s) of the Late Bronze Age collapse is unclear and its link to it yet to be reported [23,24].
The Yu and the “Great Flood” myth hypothesis states that an earthquake burst a dam in the Tibetan Plateau, resulting in the cataclysmic flood of the Yellow River basin area circa 2000 BCE, and has been increasingly debated since Wu et al. [11]. The scale and timing of the flood suggests some correspondence with the mythical “Great Flood” of the Yellow River and taming of the waters by the legendary figure of Yu. The story of the hero Yu dredging the water and earning himself the divine right to rule marks the establishment of the legendary ** Yulan, compiled by Li Fang and dating to the 10th century AD, lists 45 earthquakes between the 11th century BC and 618 AD [111,112]. Compared with the rest of the world, the Chinese records of historical earthquakes are the most complete [113]. The Shiji mentions how an earthquake in 780 BC, during the reign of King Yu of Zhou, interrupted the courses of three rivers.
“In the second year of the reign of King Yu l (of Chou), the western province’s three rivers shaken and their beds raised up, Poyang Fu said: ‘The dynasty of the Chou is going to perish. It is necessary that the chhi of heaven and earth should not lose their order; if they overstep their order (it is because there When the Yang is hidden and cannot come forth, or when the Yin bars its way and it cannot rise up, then there is what we call an earthquake. Now we see that the three rivers have dried up by this shaking; it is because the Yang has lost its place and the Yin has overburdened it. When the Yang has lost its rank and finds itself (subordinate to) the Yin, the springs become closed, and when this has happened the kingdom must be lost. When water and earth are propitious the people make use of them, when they are not, the people are deprived of what they need. Formerly when the rivers I and Lo dried up, the dynasty of the Hsia perished. When the Ho dried up, the dynasty of the Shang perished’. Now the virtue of the Chou is in the same state as that of these dynasties was in their decline. The Chou will be ruined before ten years are out; so it is written in the cycle of numbers.”
(Sima Qian, Shiji, Annals, 36 (Translation, [113] pp. 624–625)

5.2. Epigraphic Evidence

Poseidon, the “Earthshaker” [enesidao], was prolifically worshipped in the Peloponnese. We turn to the prehistoric epigraphic textual evidence from the Linear B tablets and the Jiaguwen inscriptions (Oracle Bones). Natural phenomena, like earthquakes and floods, were rationalised by later Greeks and Chinese thinkers. Turning to proto-scientific explanations of natural phenomena, we must rely on contemporary epigraphic text, interpretation of archaeological evidence, and later philosophical treatises to reconstruct the Mycenaean and Shang modes of thinking.
Poseidon, the most commonly found name of a god in the proto-Greek Linear B tablets [114], is known as e-ne-si-da-o-ne (“Earthshaker”) [115] from the 14th century BC Tablets in Knossos [114,116] and survives into the classical period as the god of the sea, earthquake, and tsunami [117] (see Figure 3).
The Linear B tablet mentioning Poseidon can also be linked to sanctuaries dedicated to Poseidon at Methana, Calaureia, and Troezen [118]. The cult of Poseidon and likely to a female counterpart by the Mycenaean is well established [119,120] and supported by the appearance of the name po-se-da-o (Tablet PY Es(-) 653 or PY Un(2) 6; also see Duhoux and Davis (2008) [121]), the cult at Phylakopi and the presence of a Hollow Psi figurine, and the pair of human figures driving the Methana chariot models [122]. This is also reinforced by the much later account of Diodorus (15.49.4), who describes the reverence paid by the Peloponnesians to their patron god, Poseidon.
“That it was Poseidon’s wrath that was wreaked upon these cities they allege that clear proofs are at hand: first, it is distinctly conceived that authority over earthquakes and floods belongs to this god, and also it is the ancient belief that the Peloponnese was an habitation of Poseidon; and this country is regarded as sacred in a way to Poseidon, and, speaking generally, all the cities in the Peloponnese pay honour to this god more than to any other of the immortals.”
(15.49.4: Diodorus Siculus, tr. 1989 [123])
Unlike the Mycenaeans, whose writing was mostly accounting, as it derives from the Mesopotamian tradition, the Jiaguwen reveals information relating to the divinatory and ancestral cult of the Shang [124,125], there is virtually no surviving secular use of writing [126].
In the Oracle Bones (Jiaguwen) inscriptions, commonplace divination is the encounter of some general ‘disaster’ or ‘misfortune’. For instance, the character huò has been subject to much debate about the divination practices of the Shang.
The Jiaguwen texts used for divinations have mostly been found at Anyang, in Henan Province, at the site of the last Shang capital known as Yinxu [41,127,128]. After the Shang dynasty was overthrown, scapulomancy and plastromancy were still practised, but held much less importance in state affairs than in the Bronze Age [125,129,130]. The Oracle Bones is written in the form of Chinese that was maybe archaic for the late Shang kings, which would have been the ‘language of the ancestors’. Within the corpus are mentioned sacrifices to the Yellow River (he) and the winds (Feng), suggesting an appeal to the spirits of natural elements [125]. The character yu or yuji is believed to mean ‘apotropaic rite against disasters’, or ‘religious ritual performed to prevent and eliminate disasters’ [131] such as illnesses, natural disasters, and crop failures:
  • 10,152: Crack-making on xinyou, performs yu ritual for flood damage.
  • 14,407: Crack-making on xinyou, divining: performs yu ritual for flood damage, and sheep are offered for rituals.
  • 72: yu ritual…for Shangjia against disasters [131].
The Shang dynasty was established circa 1600 BC and inherited a host of religious ideas, scientific notions, and mythological traditions from previous and unknown cultures, as well as trends towards urbanisation and state formation. One should be careful not to project later historical accounts and modern understanding on such an archaic Bronze Age culture as was the Shang [41]. For a more detailed discussion of the religious landscape of early China, see [132,133]. An impression of the Shang religious beliefs could be summarised as natural phenomena considered as deities, such as the sun, the winds, the earth, the river, etc., whose connection with the Shang ancestral lineage is blurry. He, the river deity (spirit—shen, or force) and Yue (mountain) figure prominently in the Pantheon and are conventionally believed to refer to the Yellow River and Songshan (Mt. Song). Sacrifices were made to these shen (spirits) [41]. Lastly, the identity of Di has been debated. Responsible for the huo (catastrophe, disaster, ill omen), he is linked with weather and crops [134]. The Shang rulers appealed to Di to divine his intentions on projects, wars, and buildings [135].

5.3. Texts and Ideas from Later Periods

The growing interest in Sino-Hellenic comparative historical and philosophical studies [136,137] begins from the early historical periods of China and Greece. During the antiquity of Greece and China, several conceptions about natural disasters and their explanations are formulated. For instance, the Shiji quote refers to the Yin and Yang, a prevalent notion during the Han Dynasty that earthquakes could be foretold astrologically. In ideas found in the I-Ching (Book of Changes), earthquakes or thunders could be due to constrained Yang or an excess of Yin [113]. Whether such theories can be found with some approximation to periods before the eighth century BC is debatable [113]. The Meteorologica, reiterating Anaxagoras, stated that earthquakes were the result of water excess from the upper regions flowing into the hollows of the earth. Democritus considered that earthquakes were the result of soil saturated with water. Anaximenes proposed that seismic shocks result from masses of world falling in caverns. Aristotle put forward the notion of earthquakes being due to instability of the pneuma/vapour [138].

6. Conclusions

Ancient texts dating to periods several centuries after the disasters have sometimes been used to glean some clues and offer general remarks about prehistoric religion and beliefs regarding divination and natural disasters in Greece and China [130], in particular, the sociological implications of divinations as a political and rhetorical tool. Perhaps the comparison of Greek and Chinese mantic practices can be insightful for the archaeological interpretations of Shang and Mycenaean religion and sociological implications of natural events [138].
Yet, the remains of destruction and abandonment of once-thriving settlements are the staple of archaeological research. The causes that led to the sudden or gradual abandonment of settled sites and regions are not clear and must be examined. The catalogue of lost, destroyed, or abandoned community sites is large and incomplete. The fall of a once-thriving world contains the ingredients for many literary, political, religious, ideological, and overall cultural concerns and products. The Bamboo Annals and other works [139] describe earthquakes occurring during the time of the mythical emperor Fa (1831 BC) and the Gui emperor (1809 BC). However, their reliability and historicity remain doubtful [85]. Lastly, we may conclude that the Yu and the Great Flood parable, historicised in the Book of Documents (Shiji), which occurred in the time of the mythical King Yao, refers to a ‘flood’ (hongshui) from the mythical primordial sea or waters [140].
If we consider these myths, such as Yu the Great, Deucalion, Ogyges, and so on, as living fossils of human culture, then there is still no convincing methodical way of blending archaeological, historical, environmental, and legendary evidence. If there were no prehistoric people, just prehistoric tools, then the experiences of natural dangers and disasters and fears of a cataclysmic collapse of apocalyptical destruction were also woven into the fabric of their world-view, which was then expressed and addressed through practical and spiritual means. The Mycenaeans and the Shang were intelligent observers of their ecology. It can be assumed that no natural (or supernatural) phenomenon, regular or exceptional, was ignored. These occurrences grouped ecological phenomena and societal and spiritual beliefs, which blended into convictions about the triangular influence between deities on nature, nature, and humans (nature–humans–deities) and the ideological legitimacy of archaic rulership. The feats of the Mycenaean and Shang engineers and architects are impressive. Their resilience to floods, droughts, earthquakes, and other catastrophic natural phenomena is understood through practical, intellectual, emotive, ideological, and spiritual engagements with perennial threats.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, I.L. and A.J.D.W.; methodology, I.L., A.J.D.W., M.S. and C.M.; software, I.L. and A.J.D.W.; resources, A.J.D.W., M.S., I.L. and C.M.; writing—original draft preparation, A.J.D.W. and I.L.; writing—review and editing, A.J.D.W., I.L., C.M.; visualisation, A.J.D.W., I.L. and C.M.; supervision, I.L., M.S., C.M.; project administration, I.L., A.J.D.W. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Fund project host: Miao Changhong), grant number 42171186.

Acknowledgments

A.J.D.W expresses special thanks to the École Française d’Athènes 1-month grant for access to its library in Athens, Greece, which made this paper’s completion possible. I.L. thanks the Laboratory of Yellow River Cultural Heritage, Key Research Institute of Yellow River Civilization and Sustainable Development & Collaborative Innovation Center on Yellow River Civilization, Henan University, China, for supporting the Sino-Hellenic Academic Project (www.huaxiahellas.com, last accessed 1 July 2022).

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Figure 2. Map showing sites mentioned in the text and associated environmental features around the Yellow River basin such as Mount Song (triangle) (based on the flood dynamics described in [23], under a Creative Commons Attribution License). (basemap: free from Tom Patterson, US National Park Service Natural Earth), distance Taosi-Anyang = 256 km.
Figure 2. Map showing sites mentioned in the text and associated environmental features around the Yellow River basin such as Mount Song (triangle) (based on the flood dynamics described in [23], under a Creative Commons Attribution License). (basemap: free from Tom Patterson, US National Park Service Natural Earth), distance Taosi-Anyang = 256 km.
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Figure 3. The Volcanic Arc and the Hellenic Trench in Greece with sites mentioned in the text. The Aegean Sea Plate (also called the Hellenic Plate or Aegean Plate) is a minor tectonic plate in the eastern Mediterranean Sea under southern Greece and far western Turkey. Its southern edge is a subduction zone south of Crete, where the African Plate is swept under the Aegean Sea Plate. Seismic and volcanic centers lie along the euro-african subduction zone. The Volcanic Arc (orange dashed line) of the northern Eurasian Plate is a divergent boundary responsible for the formation of the Gulf of Corinth. Note the northern Aegean Trench, the Hellenic Trench, and Pliny and Strabo fault zones in eastern Crete (based on [54,55], scale: Athens-Thebes = 205 km (Basemap: United States National Imagery and Map** Agency data)).
Figure 3. The Volcanic Arc and the Hellenic Trench in Greece with sites mentioned in the text. The Aegean Sea Plate (also called the Hellenic Plate or Aegean Plate) is a minor tectonic plate in the eastern Mediterranean Sea under southern Greece and far western Turkey. Its southern edge is a subduction zone south of Crete, where the African Plate is swept under the Aegean Sea Plate. Seismic and volcanic centers lie along the euro-african subduction zone. The Volcanic Arc (orange dashed line) of the northern Eurasian Plate is a divergent boundary responsible for the formation of the Gulf of Corinth. Note the northern Aegean Trench, the Hellenic Trench, and Pliny and Strabo fault zones in eastern Crete (based on [54,55], scale: Athens-Thebes = 205 km (Basemap: United States National Imagery and Map** Agency data)).
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Figure 4. Present-day active seismic faults and deep saline aquifers related to the approximate extent of the Shang culture (dashed line) and beyond (based on source: [95], distances 5° = 555 km).
Figure 4. Present-day active seismic faults and deep saline aquifers related to the approximate extent of the Shang culture (dashed line) and beyond (based on source: [95], distances 5° = 555 km).
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Westra, A.J.D.; Miao, C.; Liritzis, I.; Stefanakis, M. Disasters and Society: Comparing the Shang and Mycenaean Response to Natural Phenomena through Text and Archaeology. Quaternary 2022, 5, 33. https://doi.org/10.3390/quat5030033

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Westra AJD, Miao C, Liritzis I, Stefanakis M. Disasters and Society: Comparing the Shang and Mycenaean Response to Natural Phenomena through Text and Archaeology. Quaternary. 2022; 5(3):33. https://doi.org/10.3390/quat5030033

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Westra, Alexander Jan Dimitris, Changhong Miao, Ioannis Liritzis, and Manolis Stefanakis. 2022. "Disasters and Society: Comparing the Shang and Mycenaean Response to Natural Phenomena through Text and Archaeology" Quaternary 5, no. 3: 33. https://doi.org/10.3390/quat5030033

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