Yu the Great

Yu is said to have ruled as sage-king during the late 3rd millennium BC, though no contemporary evidence of his existence survives. His name appears first on vessels from the Western Zhou period - roughly a millennium after the era in which he supposedly lived, and centuries after the oracle bone script that would have recorded him. Still, the legend held: Confucius and other teachers praised him for virtue and upright moral character. The story that stuck was "Great Yu Controls the Waters," in which he achieved the first successful state efforts at flood control. That feat became the foundation myth for the Xia dynasty, which inaugurated dynastic rule in China, and earned him the posthumous epithet "the Great" - a title held by few Chinese monarchs.