Oracle bone script records explain the impact of climate extremes in ancient China

Extreme climatic and weather events have raised increasing concerns in the context of climate change for causing severe disasters worldwide. As for ancient civilizations, however, possible causes of extreme events and their corresponding cultural responses have remained unclear. By quantitatively analyzing the weather information in ~55000 oracle bone script pieces, we constructed three ~200-year indexes representing drought, flood and rainfall conditions in the Chinese Bronze Age. Combined with paleoclimatic proxies, meteorological data, model simulations, and archaeological evidence, here we find that millennial-scale strong El Niño and typhoon activities caused extreme droughts and floods in the central plains of China, thus notably influencing early cultures and civilizations in China.