Not a pretty prospect is it? As many of you read in my article "Tragedy in the Three Gorges", upon completion of the Three Gorges Dam over 1.3 million people will have been displaced. These people will never again be able to walk the streets where they played as children, touch the tree where a swing once hung in their mother's yard or plant a flower on a loved one's grave.
It has been over a year since I wrote about this tragedy, and work on the dam has continued, almost completely unimpeded. Chinese officials say the dam is needed not only to produce power for China's booming economy and population but to control the annual floods of the mighty Yangtze River itself. It is estimated that the floods of the Yangtze have killed over 300,000 people in this century alone.
But is that really the reason? Does the Chinese government really have the best interests of the people and progress at heart?
Experts, researchers, scientists, writers, poets and more have railed against this dam from the beginning, ever since it was proposed more than 80 years ago, but to no avail. It seems the Chinese government is obsessed with "greatness." This dam will be massive. It will be one of only two man-made objects visible from space. The other is, of course, the Great Wall of China.
In spite of it all, the Chinese government continues to rock the boat. Reports of human rights violations, archaeological site looting, embezzlement and widespread corruption have not swayed the government against the dam project. Below are just a few of the archaeological sites and finds in danger from the Three Gorges Dam project.
The Yangtze River valley has been called the Southern Cradle of Chinese Civilization, and for good reason. The ways of life established in the Three Gorges region have existed since before the beginning of recorded history. Fossils found at Longgupo, or "Dragon Bone" Cave, well within the Three Gorges flood area, have proved to be a sub-species of Homo Erectus with similarities to Homo Habilis. And, the fossils apparently date to more than two million years old. That puts ancestors of modern day man in Asia almost one million years before previous estimates, and the dates challenge those of fossils of other early humans as the oldest ever found. The Dragon Bone Cave site is over 10 miles from the shores of the Yangtze River today; however, the cave and all the information it might yield will be lost once the river is girdled by the Three Gorges Dam.
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