Cuban government apologizes to Montreal-area family after delivering wrong body
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
More than 4,000 years ago, one of the most advanced societies in ancient China, referred to as “China’s Venice of the Stone Age” for its complex water management system, disappeared suddenly.
The reason for the abrupt collapse of Liangzhu City hasn’t been clear until now, but according to a new study published in the journal Science Advances, the city was wiped out not by war or famine but by an unusually heavy monsoon season, which flooded the region.
The ruins of Liangzhu City can be found in the Yangtze Delta, around 160 kilometres southwest of Shanghai, all that remains of an advanced society that existed around 5,300 years ago.
Liangzhu has only recently been recognized for its archeological significance, with the United Nations declaring it a World Heritage Site in 2019, but it is one of the earliest societies to display advanced water infrastructure.
The walled city was filled with canals, dams and water reservoirs that fed agricultural sites throughout the year. The archeological site was also rich in jade artifacts, with thousands of intricately carved pieces found during excavations.
It had been posited before that flooding could’ve led to the demise of the city, but it hadn’t been proven.
“A thin layer of clay was found on the preserved ruins, which points to a possible connection between the demise of the advanced civilization and floods of the Yangtze River or floods from the East China Sea,” Christoph Spötl, a geologist with the University of Innsbruck and one of the authors of the new research, said in a press release. “No evidence could be found for human causes such as warlike conflicts. However, no clear conclusions on the cause were possible from the mud layer itself."
In order to confirm that a climate event caused the end of this society, which existed for 1,000 years, researchers dug through archives containing data on caves in the area. Specifically, the data looked at stalactites and stalagmites that were formed by thousands of years of precipitation dripping down from the ceiling of the caves. These cave structures allow researchers to peer into the past and “allow the reconstruction of climatic conditions above the caves up to several 100,000 years into the past,” the release stated.
"These caves have been well explored for years,” Spötl said. “They are located in the same area affected by the Southeast Asian monsoon as the Yangtze delta and their stalagmites provide a precise insight into the time of the collapse of the Liangzhu culture, which, according to archeological findings, happened about 4,300 years ago.”
Between 4,345 and 4,324 years ago, the city and the surrounding area was bombarded with an unusually high level of rain. It was the specific isotope records of carbon found in the cave samples that allowed researchers to pinpoint at what time this precipitation increased. A lab at Xi’an Jiaotong University tested the samples and were confident within 30 years plus or minus that they had found the time when the rain pummelled Liangzhu.
"The massive monsoon rains probably led to such severe flooding of the Yangtze and its branches that even the sophisticated dams and canals could no longer withstand these masses of water, destroying Liangzhu City and forcing people to flee,” Spötl said.
Cuba's foreign affairs minister has apologized to a Montreal-area family after they were sent the wrong body following the death of a loved one.
The federal government's proposed change to capital gains taxation is expected to increase taxes on investments and mainly affect wealthy Canadians and businesses. Here's what you need to know about the move.
On a night she should have been mourning, a nurse from Quebec's Laurentians region says she was forced to clean up her husband after he died at a hospital in Montreal.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is accusing Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre of welcoming 'the support of conspiracy theorists and extremists,' after the Conservative leader was photographed meeting with protesters, which his office has defended.
"It's a bit of a complicated pattern; we've got a lot going on," said Jennifer Smith of the Meteorological Service of Canada in an interview with CTVNews.ca on Wednesday. "[As is] typical with weather, all of these things are related."
Boeing said Wednesday that it lost US$355 million on falling revenue in the first quarter, another sign of the crisis gripping the aircraft manufacturer as it faces increasing scrutiny over the safety of its planes and accusations of shoddy work from a growing number of whistleblowers.
Police tangled with student demonstrators in Texas and California while new encampments sprouted Wednesday at Harvard and other colleges as school leaders sought ways to defuse a growing wave of pro-Palestinian protests.
Members of the Bank of Canada's governing council were split on how long the central bank should wait before it starts cutting interest rates when they met earlier this month.
A North Bay, Ont., lawyer who abandoned 15 clients – many of them child protection cases – has lost his licence to practise law.
A property tax bill is perplexing a small townhouse community in Fergus, Ont.
When identical twin sisters Kim and Michelle Krezonoski were invited to compete against some of the world’s most elite female runners at last week’s Boston Marathon, they were in disbelief.
The giant stone statues guarding the Lions Gate Bridge have been dressed in custom Vancouver Canucks jerseys as the NHL playoffs get underway.
A local Oilers fan is hoping to see his team cut through the postseason, so he can cut his hair.
A family from Laval, Que. is looking for answers... and their father's body. He died on vacation in Cuba and authorities sent someone else's body back to Canada.
A former educational assistant is calling attention to the rising violence in Alberta's classrooms.
The federal government says its plan to increase taxes on capital gains is aimed at wealthy Canadians to achieve “tax fairness.”
At 6'8" and 350 pounds, there is nothing typical about UBC offensive lineman Giovanni Manu, who was born in Tonga and went to high school in Pitt Meadows.
Kevin the cat has been reunited with his family after enduring a harrowing three-day ordeal while lost at Toronto Pearson International Airport earlier this week.