The death of Loulan was caused by human beings violating the laws of nature. Loulan people’s blind and indiscriminate deforestation led to soil erosion, sand invasion, river diversion, climate abnormality, plague epidemic, moisture reduction, and daily accumulation of salinity. In the end it resulted in the inevitable demise of the kingdom.
The final blow to the Loulan people was the plague. This is a terrible acute infectious disease. According to the legend, it is called "hot nest disease". Once it becomes sick, an entire village will be affected and an entire family will die. In the face of a huge disaster, the Loulan people chose to flee - just like the previous migrations, they were all forced.
The Loulan Kingdom collapsed, and people blindly went up the Tarim River. They went wherever there were trees and water, and wherever they could survive, they went wherever they could. When we set out on the road, we caught up with the unprecedented strong wind and sand. It was a huge formation that buried the sky and the ground. The sky was dark and the earth was dark, sand and rocks were flying, and the sound was like a ghost. A city suddenly disappeared in the turbidity and blur...
At this point, it is glorious. The ancient city of Loulan has disappeared silently from history forever.
Extended information:
The exact geographical location of Loulan Ancient City is 89 degrees 55 minutes 22 seconds east longitude and 40 degrees 29 minutes 55 seconds north latitude. It covers an area of ??more than 108,000 square meters. The remaining city walls in the east and west of the city are about 4 meters high and 8 meters wide. The city walls are made of rammed loess; the courtyard walls of residential areas are made of reeds tied into bundles or wicker braided and then plastered with clay.
They are all wooden houses with poplar wood pillars. The doors and windows of the houses are still clearly distinguishable. There is the only earthen building in the center of the city, with a wall thickness of 1.1 meters and a residual height of 2 meters. It faces north and looks like a building. The residence of the ruler of ancient Loulan; the mound to the east of the city was originally a pagoda where residents worshiped Buddha.
Scientists believe that in addition to the factors of crustal activity, the biggest reason is the accumulation of large amounts of sediment in the river bed. The sediment in the Tarim River and Kongque River gathered at the mouth of Lop Nur. Over time, more and more sediment accumulated, blocking the river channels. The Tarim River and Kongque River then found new channels and flowed to low-lying areas, forming new lakes.
The old lake gradually evaporated in the hot climate and turned into a desert. Water is the source of life for all things in Loulan City. The northward movement of Lop Nur Lake made Loulan City water thirsty and trees withered. The citizens abandoned the city and fled, leaving behind a dead city. In the raging desert storm, Loulan was finally annihilated by the sand dunes.
The disappearance of Loulan is also related to people's destruction of the ecological balance of nature. Loulan is located on the strategic route of the Silk Road. The Han, Xiongnu and other nomadic countries often provoked wars on the territory of Loulan.
Excessive cultivation for the benefit of the country has seriously damaged water conservancy facilities and good vegetation: "After the third century AD, the lower reaches of the Tarim River flowing into Lop Nur were silted up by wind and sand, and it was diverted to the southeast of Yuli today. The flow caused Loulan’s “city to stand firm and inhabited,” and “the country to have been empty for a long time, and the city to be deserted.” ”
Lop Nur was once the largest lake in the arid area of ??northwest China, with an area of ??12,000 square kilometers. At the beginning of the last century, it still covered 500 square kilometers. At that time, the Loulan people built more than 100,000 square meters beside Lop Nur. The ancient city of Loulan finally dried up in 1972.
The Lop Nur Environmental Drilling Scientific Investigation Team of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted a comprehensive and systematic environmental scientific investigation of Lop Nur. According to preliminary inferences, as the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau continues to expand. Due to rapid uplift 70,000 to 80,000 years ago, Lop Nur moved from south to north, and aridity gradually intensified, eventually causing the entire lake to dry up.
Professor Zhou Kunshu of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. It is believed that the reasons for the drying up of Lop Nur are complex. This is both a global problem and a regional problem. In addition to natural reasons, there are also human factors.
Baidu Encyclopedia - Loulan
People's Daily Online - The mystery of the ancient city of Loulan: it has disappeared many times in history