**6. Conclusions**

In this paper, evidence from historical sources as well as current stratigraphic investigations has been presented, demonstrating that Kaifeng, a typical Yellow River city, has both natural and human heritages that are significant in terms of their authenticity and integrity, not just to China, but also to the rest of the world. Such evidence supports the view that Kaifeng meets the requirements as specified by the World Heritage Convention to be included as a World Heritage site. However, Kaifeng city is only one of some 93 disaster cities in the Yellow River floodplain and it is, therefore, recommended that those cities, which includes Kaifeng, with such a unique urban form, as shaped by Yellow River floods and the responses to them, be jointly declared as World Heritage sites together with the Yellow River Dams and the lower Yellow River.

The sedimentary archive at Kaifeng is remarkable for its thickness and exceptional preservation. The environmental and archaeological record here is almost unmatched in China, if not worldwide. Research at Kaifeng, therefore, provides an opportunity for exploring long-term change processes associated with the environment, the relationships between human behavior, technology, and nature, as well as the roles and influences of the Yellow River on history, politics, economics, and society.

**Author Contributions:** P.W. and D.L. designed the research and wrote the paper. J.M. and C.M. performed the research. L.C., L.G. and J.T. helped to edit the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

**Funding:** The research was funded by National Social Science Foundation of China (15BZS024), the Youth Backbone Teachers Project of Henan Provincial Universities (2016GGJS-027), the Humanities and Social Science Projects by Ministry of Education of China (12JJD790023) and Program for Innovative Talents of Zhongyuan Post-Doctoral in 2018.

**Acknowledgments:** The authors are grateful to Professor Liritzis Ioannis and Jeremy Whitehand for helping us to improve the manuscript their comments on a draft of the paper. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers of the original draft manuscript for their comments, which ultimately helped to improve this paper.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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