12,000 Years Ago, Mysterious Egg-Headed People Inhabited China

Archaeologists excavated 25 human skeletons with elongated skulls dating back perhaps as long as 12,000 years ago from Houtaomuga archaeological site in northeast China.

The strange shape of the skulls symbolizes a part of the ritual in ancient China. The discovery provides additional proof that cranial alterations were prevalent in ancient East Asia and was a customary practice throughout the world during prehistoric times.

According to a study published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology in 2019, a team of researchers, led by bioarchaeologist Quanchao Zhang and paleoanthropologist Qian Wang, discovered 25 skeletons at a location known as Houtaomuga.

The remains were dated between approximately 12,000 and 5,000 years ago. Out of the 25 skeletons, 11 had skulls that had been intentionally elongated, with flattened bones at both the front and back of the head.

The researchers from China’s Jilin University and Texas A&M University who conducted the excavations were surprised at the abundance of “anomalies” and suggested that many were “egg-shaped.”

Study co-researcher Qian Wang, an associate professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the Texas A&M University College of Dentistry said: “This is the earliest discovery of signs of intentional head modification in Eurasia continent, perhaps in the world.

If this practice began in East Asia, it likely spread westward to the Middle East, Russia, and Europe through the steppes as well as eastward across the Bering land bridge to the Americas.” 

The Chinese civilization is one of the most ancient and continuous in the world. While their recorded history can be traced back to the 5th century BC, with the emergence of the Zhou dynasty, there is archaeological evidence that suggests their history dates back even further.

The earliest documented records refer to semi-mythical people called the “Yellow Emperor” and his beastly advisors – known as the “Foolish Old Men.”

Currently, the Chinese egg-shaped skulls are considered to be the oldest in the world. Besides, it was noted that the tradition of stretching heads had been formed long before the Neolithic Revolution (First Agricultural Revolution) took place. It was believed that the tradition of skull modification started around 9,000 years ago.

According to Archaeology, the discovered skulls exhibited artificially elongated braincases and flattened bones at both the front and back of the head.

The researchers identified three different types of cranial deformations in eleven of the skulls. Out of these 11, five were adults, with one female and others male. The remaining skulls belonged to children, and the ages of the individuals varied from 3 to 40 years old.

Scientists still do not know why in ancient times people deliberately pulled their skulls out and where it started. The children’s heads were clamped in a special vice or in a device of two boards. In the process, not only the bones of the skull were stretched, but also the inside structure deformed. At the same time, the bones of the skull became very thin.

Archaeologists believed that humans with deformed skulls were trained to perform important social roles. For example, to become priests of a certain cult.

They believed that elongated skulls would open some unusual abilities, and allow them to communicate with higher powers. At least, people probably thought that by pulling back their heads, they acquire a strong social status in their society.

For centuries, our ancestors utilized various wooden, rag, and rope techniques to scar their own and their children’s heads, seeking aesthetic enhancement. The desire for such body modification has persisted worldwide for thousands of years, with some still practicing it, especially in Africa.

The reason behind this practice remains uncertain, puzzling scientists who can only surmise that some compelling motivation drove our forebears to endure such pain. Even though the Houtaomuga man is the oldest known case of deliberate skull reshaping in history, it is a mystery whether other known instances of deliberate skull reshaping spread from this group, or whether they rose independently of one another, Wang said.

Oddly shaped, intentionally modified skulls have been discovered in various regions across the globe. While assertions from the 1980s contended that two Neandertal skulls, estimated to be around 45,000 years old, had been reshaped during infancy, numerous scholars have since refuted these claims.

The most ancient skulls that exhibit widely acknowledged indications of cranial modification date back to approximately 13,000 to 10,000 years ago in the western areas of Asia, southeastern Australia, and most recently, East Asia. On the other hand, this practice began over 8,000 years ago in the Americas.

Despite the popular belief that the elongated skull, thought to be around 12,000 years old, was intentionally altered, some experts disagree. Although the skull does display some elongation, it is not significant enough to suggest intentional deformation. In fact, evidence only supports forced skull modification in those dating back 6,000 years ago.

The peculiar case of “Paracas skulls” is another discovery of elongated skulls, however, it is different from the rest of skull elongation cases.

The size of the cranium of Paracas skulls is significantly larger, by 25% and 60% heavier than typical human skulls, which indicates that they were not artificially altered through head flattening. Moreover, these skulls possess a single parietal plate, instead of two. Due to the absence of any cranial deformation, the elongation of these skulls remains unexplained and has been so for many years.

The significance of the discovery in Houtaomuga remains noteworthy, irrespective of the ongoing controversy. It highlights the existence of deliberate skull alterations during the Neolithic period in the region. Additionally, the findings offer insights into the community’s culture and convictions during the latter phase of the Stone Age.

A 42,000-year-old pendant found in northern Mongolia may be the earliest known phallic art

An international team of researchers has found a pendant in northern Mongolia that may be the earliest known example of a carved phallus. This pendant suggests that for at least 42,000 years, our species has been artistically depicting the penis.

The stone was found at a dig site in northern Mongolia’s Khangai Mountains. The piece of ornament interpreted as a phallus-like representation is about 4.3 centimeters long and made by humans.

According to researchers behind a study of the pendant, published this week in Nature Scientific Reports, the carved graphite is the “earliest-known sexed anthropomorphic representation.”

The dating of the material shows it was from approximately 42,400 to 41,900 years ago, putting its creation in the Upper Paleolithic.

Three-dimensional phallic pendants are unknown in the Paleolithic record. It attests that hunter-gatherer communities used sex anatomical attributes as symbols at a very early stage of their dispersal in the region.

The pendant was produced during a period that overlaps with age estimates for early introgression events between Homo sapiens and Denisovans, and in a region where such encounters are plausible,” the science team wrote in the study published in Nature.

The black pendant has several grooves, but two of them caught the attention of scientists.

Researchers think these grooves were carved into the stone to make it resemble a human penis. But not everyone is convinced that the Mongolian pendant represents a phallus.

Solange Rigaud, an archaeologist at the University of Bordeaux and the study’s lead author, thinks the strongest argument for the pendant as a phallic representation comes from the features its maker focused on.

“Our argument is that when you want to represent something abstractly, you will choose very specific features that really characterize what you want to represent,” she says. For example, the carver appears to have taken care to define the urethral opening, she notes, and to distinguish the glans from the shaft.

A combination of microscopy and other surface analyses show that stone tools were likely used to carve out the grooves for both the urethra and the glans.

The pendant was also discovered to be smoother on the back than the front; a string was likely fastened around the glans, suggesting the ornament may have been worn around the neck.

The amount of wear on the surface suggests it was likely handed down across multiple generations.

Graphite wasn’t widely available near Tolbor, suggesting the pendant may have come from elsewhere, perhaps through trade.

The study was published in the journal Nature.

Explore 1,400-year-old ruins, submerged in Eastern China – Atlantis of China

Deep in Qiandao Lake, between China’s Five Lion Mountains, lie the mysterious ruins of two ancient cities, dating back to the Han and Tang dynasties. Known as the ‘Atlantis of China,’ the place is largely preserved intact even after centuries.

Qiandao Lake, also known as Thousand Island Lake, is a sprawling body of fresh water, covering 573 sq. km. The name comes from the fact that there are over a thousand islands in the lake.

The underwater city of Shicheng is a magnificent, mysterious time capsule of Imperial China. Shi Cheng – which means Lion City in Mandarin – was purposely flooded in 1959 to make way for the Xin’an Dam and its adjoining hydroelectric station.

This was a massive government project that forced 300,000 people to relocate their homes as more than 1,300 villages and tens of thousands of acres of farmland were flooded and submerged.

In addition to the direct impact on the local residents, two ancient cities located in the valley at the foot of the mountain were also submerged into the lake.

The city was “rediscovered” in 2001 when the Chinese government organized an expedition to see what might remain of the lost metropolis.

The early divers found Shi Cheng to be largely intact, with many of the structures, carvings, guardian lions, and arches still preserved. There have been efforts to map & document Shi Cheng by divers and researchers, as well as looking into protective measures to prevent damage to it.

In January 2011, the cities were declared historical relics under the protection of the Zhejiang Province.

Shi Cheng was once the center of politics and economics in the eastern providence of Zhejiang. It is believed the city of Shi Cheng was built during the Tang Dynasty in 621 AD. Based on records of the region’s history, it is thought to be quite large, possibly over 60 football fields, and featuring 265 arches throughout the city. 

Shi Cheng was also unusual in that it was constructed with 5 city gates and towers, as opposed to the norm of 4.  The city of He Cheng is believed to date back even further to the Han Dong dynasty (25 -200 AD).

The city achieved the zenith of its glory from 1368-1644 when the Ming dynasty ruled China. The existing walls of the city date to the sixteenth century.

In 2014, after the authorities realized that the city was intact below water, they allowed tourists to visit the area by diving. Visitors can relish the 1,400-year-old architectural wonders at the diving site. However, only expert divers are allowed.

Today, advanced divers can get up close to the ruins with dive operators such as Big Blue and Zi Ao Diving Club, which run regular dives between April and November. Since the ruins have yet to be fully mapped, the dive is still considered “Exploratory”.

12 tombs with Beautiful Decorations and Carved Bricks from the period of Kublai Khan, the grandson of Genghis Khan, were found in China

China has a rich history. In addition to the fossil records from the Paleolithic Period, the country has witnessed the rise and fall of several empires and dynasties.

Recently, archaeologists excavating in Shandong, China, have unearthed 12 incredible tombs estimated to be around 700 years old.

Archaeologists have excavated 12 ancient tombs dating back to the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) in Jinan, in east China’s Shandong Province, the local archeology institute said Wednesday. This is one of the most important finds ever made in the eastern Chinese province.

The Yuan dynasty was founded by conqueror Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan. Based on an inscription discovered at the burial complex, the tombs belong to a family called Guo.

Murals in one of the Yuan Dynasty tombs with two burial chambers were comparatively well preserved.

The carved brick murals were created using chisels and wooden hammers to make patterns in the bricks. The magpies and branches on the murals were a classic Chinese design for good fortune.

According to the institute’s director Li Ming, this was the largest cluster of Yuan Dynasty brick mural tombs unearthed in the province.

“The tombs were arranged in an orderly and apparently planned way, and some of the owners were related by blood, providing new material for the study of the arrangement of family cemeteries in the Yuan Dynasty,” Li said.

The excavation, which started on April 23, turned up more than 60 pieces of pottery and porcelain ware, bronze mirrors, copper coins, and other cultural artifacts.

The results will aid in the study of porcelain produced in the region and its environs during the Yuan Dynasty.

Kublai Khan, the fifth Khagan emperor of the Mongol Empire and a member of the Borjigin family reigned it from 1271 until 1368.

Some of the first humans in the Americas came from China, study finds

Some of the first humans to arrive in the Americas included people from what is now China, who arrived in two distinct migrations during and after the last ice age, a new genetics study has found.

“Our findings indicate that besides the previously indicated ancestral sources of Native Americans in Siberia, northern coastal China also served as a genetic reservoir contributing to the gene pool,” said Yu-Chun Li, one of the report authors.

Li added that during the second migration, the same lineage of people settled in Japan, which could help explain similarities in prehistoric arrowheads and spears found in the Americas, China, and Japan.

It was once believed that ancient Siberians, who crossed over a land bridge that existed in the Bering Strait linking modern Russia and Alaska, were the sole ancestors of Native Americans.

More recent research, from the late 2000s onwards, has signaled that more diverse sources from Asia could be connected to an ancient lineage responsible for founding populations across the Americas, including in Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and California.

Known as D4h, this lineage is found in mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only from mothers and is used to trace maternal ancestry.

The team from the Kunming Institute of Zoology embarked on a 10-year hunt for D4h, combing through 100,000 modern and 15,000 ancient DNA samples across Eurasia, eventually landing on 216 contemporary and 39 ancient individuals who came from the ancient lineage.

By analyzing the mutations that had accrued over time, looking at the samples’ geographic locations, and using carbon dating, they were able to reconstruct the D4h’s origins and expansion history.

The results revealed two migration events. The first was between 19,500 and 26,000 years ago during the Last Glacial Maximum, when ice sheet coverage was at its greatest and climate conditions in northern China were probably inhospitable.

The second occurred during the melting period, between 19,000 and 11,500 years ago. Increasing human populations during this period might have triggered migrations.

It was during this second migration that the scientists found a surprising genetic link between Native Americans and Japanese people, particularly the indigenous Ainu.

In the melting period, a subgroup branched out from northern coastal China to Japan, contributing to the Japanese people, the study said, a finding that chimes with archeological similarities between ancient people in the Americas, China, and Japan.

Li said a strength of the study was the number of samples they discovered, and complementary evidence from Y chromosomal DNA showing that male ancestors of Native Americans lived in northern China at the same time as female ancestors made researchers confident of their findings.

“However, we don’t know in which specific place in northern coastal China this expansion occurred and what specific events promoted these migrations,” he said.

“More evidence, especially ancient genomes, is needed to answer these questions.”

2,000-year-old bamboo slips discovered in Yunnan

Thousands of bamboo slips (rectangles tied together to form books) have been discovered at the Hebosuo archaeological site in southwestern China’s Yunnan province.

The Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology announced that more than 10,000 ancient bamboo and wooden slips, known as ­jiandu, have been found at the more than 2,000-year-old Hebosuo Site in Kunming, Southwest China’s Yunnan Province.

Bamboo or wooden slips were bound together to create “books” that could be written on and rolled up like scrolls before the paper was invented and used extensively.

About 2,000 of them, or 1,300, are from the Han Dynasty (202 B.C.–220 A.D.), and 837 are seal impressions. In Western Han tombs, bamboo slips are frequently literary works and books about agriculture and medicine, but in this discovery, the majority of the writings are administrative.

The seal impressions are particularly noteworthy because they include official seals from 20 of the 24 counties ruled by the ancient Dian kingdom, a non-Han culture of agriculture-based settlements, and exceptionally sophisticated metal workers centered in modern-day Yunnan. Emperor Wu of Han annexed the kingdom in 109 B.C.

Some of the slips list the names of 12 counties, including “Dian Chi county” and “Jian Ling county,” that once belonged to the Yizhou Prefecture, which was established by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220). Wu did this after defeating the Dian Kingdom, which was established by an ancient ethnic group that lived along what is now the southwest border of Yunnan Province.

Other characters such as “county magistrate,” and “Dian Cheng” (prime minister of Dian management) were also discovered on the slips, Tao Zhongjun, a Chinese historian, told the Global Times on Tuesday, noting that such information shows a “well designed” social administrative system was used to govern the southwest border area.

Titles such as “Dian Cheng” reveal special political roles were set up by the Han government in the southwest area, said Jiang Zhilong, lead archaeologist on the Hebosuo project.

“Such discoveries are evidence that shows China was a unified country made up of multi-ethnic cultures,” Jiang noted.

Parts of the Analects of Confucius, the fundamental philosophical guide to Confucianism, were also found on the slips.

They also the content of the slips covers a wide variety of topics, including judicial documents and texts related to the administrative system, transportation, and ethnic relations.

The archeologists also found house ruins and road ruins suggesting roads as wide as 12 meters at the Hebosuo site, Jinning District of Kunming, the capital of Yunnan, a core residential area of the ancient Yunnan region.

1,000-year-old brick tomb discovered in China is decorated with lions, sea anemones and ‘guardian spirits’

A stunning brick tomb thought to be more than 800 years old has been discovered in northern China by workers renovating stormwater drains.

The tomb contained three bodies — two adults and one child — as well as several pottery items. One of these, a “land coupon” inscribed with writing, indicates that the tomb was built between A.D. 1190 and 1196, when the region was ruled by the Jurchen Jin or “Great Jin” state.

According to the Shanxi Institute of Archaeology, the tomb was unearthed by the workers in mid-2019 near the village of Dongfengshan, in Yuanqu County, about 400 miles (650 kilometers) southwest of Beijing.

Archaeologists from the institute then carried out an excavation to document the tomb, and a full report on the work was released in February, according to a press release from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS.) The south-facing tomb has similarities to others found in the region from the time, such as a ceremonial “gatehouse” on its northern wall, but it is relatively simple, according to the report.

The buried structure consists of a “tomb road” to a staircase that leads down to a door in the inner chamber, which is a square about 6.5 feet (2 meters) long on each side, beneath an elaborate octagonal spire made of stepped bricks. 

The entire chamber is faced with bricks shaped to look like carved wood, which the archaeologists say were not painted. The tomb also features ornate decorations on the walls, including lions, sea anemones, flowers and two figures that are thought to represent guardian spirits.

Archaeologists from the Shanxi Institute say the three bodies found there were those of two adults aged between 50 and 60 years old, and one child aged between 6 and 8 years old.

Jurchen Jin

“Great Jin” was the second Chinese state of that name and it is often referred to as the Jurchen Jin state to distinguish it, said Julia Schneider, a professor of Chinese history at University College Cork in Ireland who was not involved in the tomb’s discovery.

Jurchen Jin emerged in about A.D. 1115 amid rebellions against the region’s earlier Liao Dynasty, and fell to the invading Mongols in 1234. But for the intervening century, it was one of the major powers in China.

Although many of its subjects were ethnically Han Chinese, Jurchen Jin was ruled by an imperial family that was ethnically Jurchen, a semi-nomadic people from northeast China related to the Manchu people, Schneider told Live Science. (The Manchu were an ethnic  native to China’s northeast and surrounding regions — called Manchuria — who conquered China and Mongolia in the 17th century and ruled for about 250 years.)

A census in 1207 gave the population of the Jurchen Jin state as 53 million people, but “probably less than 10% were Jurchen,” Schneider said.

“What makes the Jurchen Jin so interesting was that this was a multi-ethnic empire,” she said.

While many of its subjects were oriented toward Confucianism and other ideologies it considered “Chinese,” the Jurchen Jin state developed a distinctive script for the Jurchen languages and established dual administrations to oversee its Chinese and Jurchen subjects, she said.

Chinese tomb

In the case of the tomb at Dongfengshan: “I’m not an archaeologist, but my idea is that this is a Chinese tomb, based on its location in the very south of the Jurchen state,” Schneider said.

That region was mostly populated by Han Chinese, rather than ethnic Jurchen. It was possible that Jurchen dead had been entombed there in the Chinese style, but “I don’t see anything, particularly Jurchen,” she said.

The statement from CASS said the land coupon meant the structure could be firmly dated, which would provide a basis for dating other Jurchen Jin structures and artifacts found in the region.

Python May Have Been on the Neolithic Menu in Southern China

Snake bones that date back to the Neolithic period, around 6,000 years ago, have been discovered in the Zuojiang River basin, south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region.

The longest single vertebra unveiled at the site represents an individual snake belonging to the species Python bivittatus. The vertebra indicates the snake’s overall body length exceeded 4.58 meters, surpassing the previous record in China for this species of 3.56 meters.

The new discovery has also helped shed light on on the history of hunting snakes in south China, which can be traced back to about 6,000 years ago.

Most of the unearthed snake bones had suspected burn marks on the surface, and the mammalian bones piled up alongside also showed signs of manual cutting or striking, said Yang Qingping with the Guangxi Institute of Cultural Relic Protection and Archaeology.

It has not been ruled out that prehistoric human beings in the area roasted food to process the meat, Yang added.

The research was jointly carried out by the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Guangxi Institute of Cultural Relic Protection and Archaeology.

The relevant results have been published online in the international journal Historical Biology.

The Zuojiang River basin boasts rich animal and plant resources with complex and diverse landforms and multiple prehistoric cultural heritages. A group of rock paintings dating back over 2,000 years in the basin was included into UNESCO’s world heritage list in 2016.