A huge water project dating back to around 5,000 years ago has been discovered in east China’s Zhejiang Province, Chinese archeologists said.

Found near to the ancient city of Liangzhou that existed about 4,500 to 5,300 years ago, the 11-dike excavation is the oldest large water system ever found in China. It is believed to have combined functions of flood control, transportation, and irrigation.

Archeologists excavated three of the 11 dikes between July 2015 and January 2016, identifying pottery shards of the Liangzhu Culture, said lead researcher Wang Ningyuan with the provincial institute of cultural relics and archaeology.

High dikes erected along the mountains and low ones linking the mountains may have formed three reservoirs, one apparently covering 9.4 square kilometers -- about 1.5 times the area and four times the volume of Hangzhou's iconic West Lake.

Liu Jianguo with the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, who carried out geographic information system (GIS) studies, said high dikes were able to resist continuous rainfall of more than 800 millimeters and low ones 1,900 millimeters.

"Maybe our ancestors designed them to counter typhoons that brought torrential rain," he said.