Falling Yangtze River water levels reveal 600 y.o. Buddhist statues

[Tanuki]

https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/yangtze-river-reveals-buddhist-statues/index.html

"Plunging water levels of the Yangtze River have revealed a submerged island in China's southwestern city of Chongqing and a trio of Buddhist statues on it that are believed to be 600 years old, state media Xinhua has reported.

The three statues were found on the highest part of the island reef called Foyeliang, initially identified as built during the Ming and Qing dynasties. One of the statues depicts a monk sitting on a lotus pedestal.

The Yangtze's water levels have been falling rapidly due to a drought and a heatwave in China's southwestern region."...(more)

[BlackSkimmer]

2. Drought is awful, but how fascinating at some of these treasures and artifacts being discovered.

Thanks for posting.

[kentuck]

3. How long would this drought have to continue for Earth to look like Mars?

I think, that at one time, Mars looked like Earth.

[JHB]

5. Mars has a much thinner atmosphere

Surface pressure there is about what it is 25 miles up on Earth.

It simply wasn't able to hold on to an atmosphere thick enough to keep flowing water.

Drought wasn't the issue.

[Cattledog]

7. That is surface pressure today.

How do you know what it was hundreds of million years ago? Just curious.

[JHB]

9. In fact, we do think it was thicker back then, and surface features today support that

After all, features exist that were clearly formed by running water.

However, on top of the lower gravity, Mars is less geologically active and does not have a global magnetic field the way Earth does. This makes it easier for the solar wind to strip atoms from Mars' atmosphere and let it be lost to space. And with lower geologic activity, less vulcanism to replenish the atmosphere with new gasses.

Still a very different situation from a drought on Earth, no matter how severe.

[localroger]

8. Billions of years ago Mars was much more Earth-like

...with a thicker atmosphere and liquid water on the surface. But Mars has no magnetic field to deflect the solar wind, and the atmosphere was gradually blown away, along with the water, by high velocity solar wind particles. Much of this has been confirmed by the rovers.

[YoshidaYui]

4. I bet they will be

Wonderfully restored! Sugoi ne!

[panader0]

10. Yes, I hope they can be removed in case the water levels rise again (they will someday).

One of the reasons I hated the Taliban so much was because they blew up the massive statues of the Buddha
in Afghanistan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan

[YoshidaYui]

15. i remember that, its almost like they totally enjoyed blowing

up statures, especially ones that were hundreds of years old... fuckers

[haele]

14. They were probably known before the Three Gorges Dam was completed.

Either they were located in areas that were inaccessible for removal or they weren't deemed sufficiently culturally important to remove before the area was flooded. 600 years old isn't the same as 6000 years old.
Similar to the situation with the completion of the Aswan dam, whatever history or artifacts that couldn't bring tourist or research money at the time the dam was built was balanced against the economic impact of the dam and left to be flooded over if it wasn't deemed "important".

Haele

[Native]

6. The article has a pic!

[Hortensis]

11. Wonderful treasures, revealed by disaster. Thanks, Tanuki.

[malaise]

12. Wow!

Thanks for this

[muriel_volestrangler]

13. Iconic Shanghai sites go dark as drought hits power supply

An iconic skyline in the Chinese city of Shanghai - called The Bund - will not be lit for two nights to save power, officials say.
...
Elsewhere in China, major manufacturers in the Sichuan province told the BBC they had been hit by power cuts.
...
China issued its first national drought alert of the year last week, after areas including Shanghai in the Yangtze Delta region and Sichuan in southwest China experienced weeks of extreme heat.

The 'yellow alert' is the third most severe level on the official scale.

Officials in the Sichuan province, where temperatures have exceeded 40C (104F), said in a recent statement that rising temperatures and low rainfall, along with increased demand for air conditioning, had caused the power shortages.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62628544