Jennifer Ouellette, 1 January 2023, Ars Technica (Condé Nast)

Excerpt:

>The Bamboo Annals is a chronicle of ancient China, written on bamboo strips, that begins with the age of the Yellow Emperor and runs through the so-called Warring States period (5th century–221 BCE), when rival states were engaged in intense competition. It ended when the state of Qin unified the states.

>The original text of the Bamboo Annals was buried with King Xiang of Wei, who died in 296 BCE, and wasn't discovered until 281 CE, thus surviving Emperor Qin Shi Huang's burning of the books in 212 BCE (not to mention burying hundreds of Confucian scholars alive).

>Independent researcher Marinus Anthony van der Sluijs and Hisashi Hayakawa of Nagoya University relied on the ancient text [version] for their new analysis.

>This text describes the appearance of a "five-colored light" visible in the northern part of the night sky towards the end of the reign of King Zhao of the Zhou dynasty.

>While this is technically an unconfirmed candidate aurora, "The explicit mention of nighttime observation rules out daytime manifestations of atmospheric optics, which sometimes mimic candidate events," the authors wrote.

>Furthermore, "The occurrence of a multicolored phenomenon in the northern sky during the nighttime is consistent with visual auroral displays in mid-latitude regions."

> 

>The authors peg the likely date of the event to either 977 or 957 BCE. The next earliest description of a candidate aurora is found on Assyrian cuneiform tablets dated between 679-655 BCE, three centuries later.

>There are two versions of the Bamboo Annals still in existence. One is known as the "current text," consisting of two scrolls printed in the late 16th century. Many scholars believe this text is a forgery, given the many discrepancies between its text and portions of the original quoted in older books, although some scholars have argued that some parts might be faithful to the original text.

>The other version is known as the "ancient text," and was pieced together by studying the aforementioned quoted portions found in older books, especially two dating back to the early 8th century CE.

Advances in Space Research, 2022. DOI: 10.1016/j.asr.2022.01.010