The MINI terracotta army: Hundreds of small warrior statues found in 2100-year-old pit in China

Inside a 2,100-year-old pit in China, archaeologists have discovered a miniature army of sorts: carefully arranged chariots and mini statues of cavalry, watchtowers, infantry and musicians.

They look like a miniaturized version of the Terracotta Army — a collection of chariots and life-size sculptures of soldiers, horses, entertainers and civil officials — that was constructed for Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China.

Based on the design of the newfound artefacts, archaeologists believe that the pit was created about 2,100 years ago, or about a century after the construction of the Terracotta Army.

The southern part of the pit is filled with formations of cavalry and chariots, along with models of watchtowers that stand 55 inches (140 centimetres) high. At the pit’s centre, about 300 infantrymen stand alert in a square formation, while the northern part of the pit has a model of a theatrical pavilion holding small sculptures of musicians.

“The form and scale of the pit suggest that it accompanies a large burial site,” wrote archaeologists in a paper published recently in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.

The “vehicles, cavalry and infantry in square formation were reserved for burials of the monarchs or meritorious officials or princes,” the archaeologists wrote.

The soldiers and cavalry in the newly discovered army are much smaller than those in the Terracotta Army. Based on the date, size and location of the pit, archaeologists believe that this newly discovered army may have been built for Liu Hong, a prince of Qi (a part of China), who was the son of Emperor Wu (reign 141–87 B.C.).

Hong was based in Linzi, a Chinese city near the newly discovered pit; he died in 110 B.C. “Textual sources record that Liu Hong was installed as the prince of Qi when he was quite young, and he, unfortunately, died early, without an heir,” archaeologists wrote in the journal article. Shortly before Hong’s death, according to writings by ancient historian Ban Gu, a comet appeared in the sky over China.

Where is the tomb?

If the pit and its ceramic army were meant to protect Liu Hong, or another senior royal family member, in the afterlife, then a tomb should be located nearby, the archaeologists wrote.

“There are possibly architectural remains or a path leading from the pit, but there is no way to explore the main burial chamber,” the researchers wrote, noting that the tomb itself may have been destroyed. 

Older residents in the area have reported descriptions of a prominent earthen mound, some 13 feet (4 meters) high, near the pit, the study authors wrote. “Sometime in the 1960s or 1970s, workers removed the earth and flattened the area in order to widen the Jiaonan-Jinan Railway.”

The reports are corroborated by an aerial photograph taken in 1938 by the Japanese Air Force (at that time, Japan was at war with China). This picture shows a possible burial mound near the railway, the archaeologists noted.

From life size to mini-warriors

The Terracotta Army pits found beside the tomb of the first emperor of China are the only known examples of an army of life-size ceramic soldiers in China.

Shortly after the first emperor’s 210 B.C. death, his dynasty, known as the Qin dynasty, collapsed and a new dynasty, known as the Han, took over China. 

Some of the Han dynasty rulers continued to build pits with armies of ceramic soldiers for their burials, but the soldiers were considerably smaller. For instance, the infantry sculptures in the newly discovered pit are between 9 and 12 inches (22 and 31 cm) tall, nowhere near the heights of the life-size soldiers buried near the tomb of the first emperor.

The pit, along with several other archaeological sites, was discovered in the winter of 2007 during construction work. After its discovery, the pit was excavated by the Cultural Relics Agency of Linzi District of Zibo city.

After excavation was complete, archaeologists from this agency analyzed the artefacts, working with researchers from the Shandong Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology.

A report on the pit was first published, in Chinese, in 2016, in the journal Wenwu. This report was recently translated into English and published in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics.

Could cosmic rays unlock the secret tomb of China’s Qin Shi Huang guarded by terracotta warriors?

Cosmic rays may be used to scan the sealed tomb of China’s First Emperor — long rumoured to contain deadly traps and an ancient map with liquid mercury rivers. Buried under a 249-feet-high pyramidal mound, the tomb lies within a necropolis in Xi’an’s Lintong District and is famously guarded by the Terracotta Army.

Found in their thousands to the tomb’s east, as if to protect Qin Shi Huang in death from the eastern states he conquered in life, each statue was once brightly painted. However, exposure to the dry Xi’an air before appropriate conservation techniques had been devised meant that most of the soldiers’ colours faded after recovery.

For this reason, Chinese officials have long been reluctant to allow the tomb itself to be unearthed until they can guarantee the preservation of any artefacts within. However, new proposals would see subatomic particle detectors placed beneath the 2,229-year-old tomb to map out the structure’s layout in three dimensions.

Qin Shi Huang (259–210 BCE) succeeded in conquering and unifying the whole of China in 221 BCE, creating an empire that lasted for some two millennia.

His other achievements including starting construction on the Great Wall of China, establishing a nationwide road network and standardising writing and units. 

His lavish burial site was unearthed in 1974 and has inspired both films and video games, including instalments in both The Mummy and Indiana Jones franchises.

When high-energy cosmic rays from space interact with Earth’s atmosphere, they create a shower of subatomic particles, including some called ‘muons’. 

The scanning technique — ‘muon tomography’ — works as an X-ray, with detectors measuring the rate at which muons are absorbed by the material they pass through.

Just as bones absorb relatively more X-rays than flesh to create contrast in a radiograph, so does stone and metal block the passage of more muons.

The same approach has previously been used, in 2017, to reveal the presence of a previously hidden, 98-feet-long chamber within the Great Pyramid at Giza.

The muon-scanning technique has been proposed by physicist Yuanyuan Liu of the Beijing Normal University and her colleagues, who normally use cosmic rays to investigate the dark matter at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory, which is the world’s deepest cosmic ray facility which is buried some 3.7 miles under the Sichuan province.

‘As an ancient civilisation with a long history, China has a large number of cultural relics that are in need of archaeological research,’ the team told the Times.

‘For the non-intrusive detection of the internal structure of some large artefacts such as imperial tombs, the traditional geophysical methods used in archaeology have certain limitations.

‘The application of muon absorption imaging to the archaeological field can be an important supplement to traditional geophysical methods,’ they concluded. 

To put their proposal to the test, the group used existing archaeological and historical data on the mausoleum to build models of the tomb complex.

They then buried these in the ground on top of two muon detectors to show that they could indeed images the chambers in their models.

‘Preliminary imaging results prove the feasibility of muon absorption imaging for the underground chamber of the mausoleum of the First Qin emperor,’ the team said. 

The feasibility studies were funded by the central Chinese government.

Based on their tests, the team have concluded that — to scan the real-life tomb — at least two muon detectors, each of which is about the size of a washing machine, would need to be placed in different locations within 328 feet (100 metres) of the tomb’s surface.

This is not the first time that archaeologists and other scientists have tried to use non-invasive methods to map out the inside of Qin’s tomb. Unfortunately, most approaches have limitations that make them difficult to apply to the mausoleum’s particular circumstances.

Gravity anomaly detectors are good at detecting changes in density underground — but such are easily affected by environmental disturbances and their range is limited to a small area.

Ground-penetrating radar, meanwhile — a favourite of archaeological geophysicists — suffers from a too limited depth to be of much use here. 

These studies have succeeded in revealing, however, that an underground complex of some kind and state of preservation does extend some 98 feet beneath the pyramidal mound. Archaeologists believe that there is a good chance that the subterranean chambers may still be intact. Certainly, no evidence has been found that graverobbers have ever succeeded in tunnelling their way into the tomb.

Geophysicist Yang Dikun of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen — who was not involved in the present study — told the South China Morning Post that the latest proposal to scan the Emperor’s tomb was feasible.

‘The muon detectors that we build and use for fieldwork nowadays have become so small they can be carried around by a child,’ he commented.

However, Dr Yang warned, the cosmic ray approach is not without potential challenges — the main one being that the detectors have to be physically emplaced underneath the mausoleum complex without damaging it or the artefacts within.

It also required considerable patience, he added. Unlike other imaging techniques, muon tomography is far from instantaneous, and the detectors will need to operate until they have racked up enough particle counts for meaningful analysis.

In fact, simulations by Dr Liu and her team have suggested that — to produce a clear image of the tomb’s structure — the detectors would need to be left in place for at least one year. The full findings of the study were published in the journal Acta Physica Sinica.

2,400-Year-Old Tea Residue Found in China

“China is the first country in the world to discover and cultivate tea,” said Professor Shuya Wei from the Institute of Cultural Heritage and History of Science & Technology at the University of Science and Technology Beijing and her colleagues.

“In Chinese legend, tea was first discovered as an antidote by Emperor Shen Nung in 2737 BCE, according to the first monograph on Chinese herbal medicine Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica.”

“The first mention of tea planting is believed to occur in the Xiaxiaozheng, a Chinese earliest almanac recording traditional agricultural affairs, probably written in the Warring States period (475-221 BCE).”

“According to the literature, in the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BCE), tea had been used as a sacrifice and vegetable, in the Warring States period and the early Western Han dynasty, tea cultivation, tea making techniques and tea-drinking custom in Sichuan province began to spread to other places.”

The physical evidence of tea is very important to confirm the origin, development, function and culture of tea.

“As archaeological plant leaves remain have been buried for many years, most of them have rotted or charred, it is difficult to find archaeological plant leaves remains in archaeological excavation,” the researchers explained.

“Recently, 2,400-year-old charred tea remains were found in a bowl unearthed from tomb No. 1 at Xigang in the ancient capital city site of the Zhu Kingdom in Zoucheng City, Shandong province.”

“If the remains could be determined as tea, that would be the direct evidence for tea drinking in the ancient time.”

In the study, Professor Wei and co-authors analyzed the sample from the Warring State tomb using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and several other methods. They used modern tea and modern tea residue as reference samples.

Their results show that the sample contains abundant calcium phytoliths identifiable as tea and that its FTIR spectra are similar to that of the modern tea residue.

They also detected caffeine, methoxybenzene compounds, organic acids, and several other compounds in both the ancient sample and the modern tea residue.

“Since ancient times, the Chinese people have always had the habit of drinking tea, but there is no physical evidence to prove when tea actually appeared, until the discovery of tea in the Han Yangling Mausoleum, which proved that Chinese tea has a history of at least 2,150 years, which has earned recognition from Guinness World Records as the oldest tea in 2016,” the scientists said.

“The identification of the tea remains in Zoucheng — the early stage of Warring States, approximately 2,400 years ago — has advanced the origin of tea by nearly 300 years.”

“Furthermore, the tea was found in a small bowl, providing additional evidence of the usage of tea.”

“Our results indicate that tea drinking culture may start as early as in Warring State period.”

The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports.

3,000-Year-Old Road, Drainage Pipe Unearthed in China

Relics of drainage pipe, road and rut remains have been found in the ruins of Haojing, an ancient capital city dating back to the Western Zhou Dynasty (1046 B.C.-771 B.C.), according to the Shaanxi Academy of Archaeology.

The drainage pipe was uncovered in the foundation of the No. 14 building on its central-south edge, which was excavated between 2019 and 2020, the institute said on Wednesday.

Over 3 meters long, the pipe ruins are made of four round earthenware pipes with a diameter of about 25 centimetres, providing physical materials for further studies on the drainage system of the No. 14 building.

Meanwhile, an ancient road with a rut of about 12 meters long was also discovered in the recent excavation. About 1.4 meters below the existing surface, the road extends about 30 meters from west to east with a width of about 6 meters.

The vehicle rut is about 12 meters long and 8 centimetres in depth. It is the first time for the archaeologists to find such road and track remains at the site, said the institute.

READ ALSO: ANCIENT WALLS OF BENIN WERE FOUR TIMES LONGER THAN THE WALLS OF CHINA

The No. 14 foundation site, which covers more than 1,800 square meters, is believed to have been used in the middle to late Western Zhou Dynasty period and is of great importance for further research on the architecture functions, construction techniques and the capital layout of the dynasty.

Haojing site, where the capital city of the Western Zhou Dynasty was located, was excavated in the current city of Xi’an, the capital of northwest China’s Shaanxi Province.

The ancient ruins have a total area of around 920 hectares

‘Pyramid of eyes’ discovered at the heart of the 4300-year-old city in northern China

The ruins were thought to be an unexcavated portion of China’s famous Great Wall. But a recent examination has unearthed something much, much older. It’s a 4300-year-old walled metropolis. At its heart is a giant step pyramid — lavishly adorned with stone stylised eyes and faces.

Now called Shimao, its ancient name is long since lost.

But its significance was — and is — enormous.

It was once a thriving Bronze Age trade hub. Covering some 400 hectares, it was also one of the largest cities in the ancient world.

It was also the centre for murderous ritual worship. According to a study published in the journal Antiquity, the city thrived for some 500 years before falling into rubble.

PYRAMID OF THE EYES

It’s not a pyramid in the traditional sense. Its sides are not straight or equal. And it was moulded out of a hill, given its shape with rammed-earth and given strength by stone retaining walls.

But it is an enormous stepped mound covering some 24 hectares at its base, and 70 metres high. In comparison, the Great Pyramid of Giza covers some 5.5ha but reaches some 139m into the sky.

The Shimao structure’s stone buttresses form 11 steps. And these appear to have been heavily decorated. Part-animal, part-human faces have been found etched into its stones along with distinctive eye-like symbols.

These “may have endowed the stepped pyramid with special religious power and further strengthened the general visual impression on its large audience,” the researchers wrote.

The topmost ‘step’ of the pyramid was a large plaza, upon which structures were built. Among the 4300-year-old city, remains are a water cistern, pillars, tiles and fine-quality domestic items, such as pottery.

“(These were) extensive palaces built of rammed earth, with wooden pillars and roofing tiles, a gigantic water reservoir, and domestic remains related to daily life,” the study reads.

Archaeologists have also found a mural at the site, which they think could be among the oldest in China. The pyramid was visible from every aspect of the city, providing a “constant and overwhelming reminder to the Shimao population of the power of the ruling elites residing atop it”.

“At the entrance to the stepped pyramid were sophisticated bulwarks (walls) whose design suggests that they were intended to provide both defence and highly restricted access.”

But it was more than just a retreat for the elite. Valuable craftsmen appear to have been protected by its walls.

“Evidence so far suggests that the stepped pyramid complex functioned not only as a residential space for ruling Shimao elites but also as a space for artisanal or industrial craft production,” the study reads.

HUMAN SACRIFICE

Apart from being a hub of regional trade, Shimao also appears to have been a religious centre. Jade was ritually inserted between most of the blocks in Shimao’s walls. And the remains of what appear to be human sacrifices have been found in six pits at several locations around the outer ramparts of the city.

“The jade objects and human sacrifice may have imbued the very walls of Shimao with ritual and religious potency,” the study says.

“In the outer gateway of the eastern gate on the outer rampart alone, six pits containing decapitated human heads have been found. Morphological analysis of the human remains suggests that the victims may have been related to the residents of Zhukaigou (a nearby city), which could further suggest that they were taken to Shimao as captives during the expansion of the Shimao empire.”

READ ALSO: GOLD MASK AMONG 3,000-YEAR-OLD RELICS UNEARTHED IN SOUTHWEST CHINA

And it was a city prepared to fight.

The entire suburban sprawl — not just the central pyramid — was protected by walls, ramparts and bastions.

“Analysis and comparison of new archaeological data … have revealed a highly complex society, the political and economic heartland, and possibly the most powerful (civilisation), of the territory of what is today China,” the Antiquity article reads.

“Not only (was Shimao) the largest walled settlement of its time in ancient China, but was also among the largest centres in the world.”

China has unearthed the largest ancient tomb of the Qin Dynasty. Nearly two hundred people were buried

Mentions the ancient tombs of China. The first thing many people think of is the mausoleum of Qin Shihuang, but the tomb of Qin Shihuang has not been fully excavated. Many people may not know that the largest ancient tomb unearthed in China is the tomb of the ancestor of Qin Shihuang.

In 1975, an archaeological team from Shaanxi searched for the relics of the ancestors of the Qin Dynasty in Shaanxi. At that time, the place where the relics of the ancestors of the Qin Dynasty was most likely to exist was Fengxiang County, Baoji. The remains of the ancestors of the country.

Until 1976, strange news from a villager brought new hope to the archaeological team. The farmer’s surname was Zhao. He was a villager from the south of Fengxiang County. The villagers of Zhao said that there was a piece of cultivated land in their village, and the villagers were on it. Nothing grows Even if it is fertilizing and watering, it still does not grow as a dealer.

Later, the cultivated land was panicked and there were no people to plant it. The strange thing is that the land does not grow even weeds, and the weeds on the surrounding ground grow old and tall. The villagers were surprised by the fact that there was almost no grass in one of them.

Later, the villagers repaired houses and yards at their homes, and they all went to this open space to collect soil. This matter also became a topic of chat among the villagers, and was heard by a passing expert.

The expert judged based on experience that this place is probably under an Ancient tomb. soon came to an archaeological team to conduct a series of explorations on this open space.

The expert’s inspection results were shocked. There are buildings below and two basketball courts large enough for them. Experts further excavated. The survey gradually cleared out the outline of the underground building.

After cleaning up, it was discovered that this ancient tomb showed a “Zhong” shape. During excavation, experts discovered that the ancient tomb was divided into three floors, with a depth of more than 20 meters, which was as high as the current 8-story building. The ancient tomb is really rare, and such a tomb has never been excavated.

In 1976, archaeologists formally excavated the ancient tomb. Unexpectedly, some circular openings were discovered during the excavation process.

After careful inspection, it was found that these openings were formed later, which shows that the tomb was once dug by tomb robbers. The expert suddenly felt cold.

After, under the leadership of Deputy Captain Tian Yaqi, the staff cleaned up the three-story ancient tombs. A total of 247 robbing holes were cleared out.

These robbing holes are simply more than the mouse holes. So far, the archaeological staff has no idea about the tombs. Have some hope, but continue to dig in accordance with the regulations.

In the next cleanup, the staff cleared out more than 20 remains, which were randomly placed and formed. Afterwards, a large number of remains were discovered. After statistics, as many as 186 remains.

Experts confirmed that these remains were all martyrs. , And then cleared out a large number of bronzes. has cleared a total of more than 3,500 artifacts.

According to the inscriptions on the bronzes, it can be known that this is the tomb of Qin Jinggong. This person is the 14th monarch of Qin and the 18th ancestor of Qin Shihuang. He reigned for 40 years and belonged to Qin. During the heyday, it was just this way that they had the financial resources to build such a huge tomb.

130-Million-Year Old Proteins Still Present in Dinosaur-Age Fossil

Microscopic pigment structures and proteins that graced the feathers of a Cretaceous-age bird are still present in its 130-million-year-old fossil, a new study finds.

The results, which confirm the oldest evidence of the structural protein beta-keratin, show that molecules can survive in their original state for hundreds of millions of years without fossilizing and that researchers can use modern techniques to identify them, the researchers said.

The tiny and ancient structures were found on Eoconfuciusornis, a crow-size early bird that lived in what is now northern China during the Early Cretaceous.

Eoconfuciusornis is one of the first birds known to have a keratinous beak and no teeth. (Not all avian predecessors were toothless. For instance, Archaeopteryx, a transitional animal between dinosaurs and birds, had sharp teeth.)

The Eoconfuciusornis specimen came from the Jehol Biota in northern China, a site known for its well-preserved fossils.

The specimen is currently housed in China’s Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, the world’s largest dinosaur museum, according to a 2010 Guinness World Records award.

At first, the researchers suspected that the fossil held pigment structures called melanosomes. However, to make sure that the tiny structures weren’t simply microbes that had accrued over the millennia, they had to do a number of tests, said Mary Schweitzer, a professor of biology at North Carolina State University with a joint appointment at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

Schweitzer co-authored the study with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“If these small bodies are melanosomes, they should be embedded in a keratinous matrix, since feathers contain beta-keratin,” Schweitzer said in a statement. “If we couldn’t find the keratin, then those structures could as easily be microbes, or a mix of microbes and melanosomes,” which would lead to inaccurate predictions of pigmentation.

To learn more, Schweitzer and her colleague’s used scanning and transmission electron microscopy to get a better view of the fossilized feathers’ surfaces and internal structures. In addition, using a technique called immunogold labelling, the scientists attached gold particles to antibodies. These gold antibodies then bind to specific proteins (in this case, keratin), which makes them visible under an electron microscope.

In addition, the scientists used high-resolution imaging to map the copper and sulfur within the feathers.

The sulfur was broadly distributed, as would be expected in a keratinous material, as “the keratin protein family incorporates high concentrations of amino acids rich in sulfur,” the researchers wrote in the study, published online in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

READ ALSO: SKELETON WITH BIRD SKULL IN ITS MOUTH IDENTIFIED AS A 12-YEAR-OLD SCANDINAVIAN GIRL FROM 17TH CENTURY

In contrast, copper is found in melanosomes but not in keratin. After the mapping analysis, the researchers found the copper only in the fossil melanosomes, they said. This indicates that the Eoconfuciusornis specimen has 130-million-year-old melanosomes and that it wasn’t contaminated during its decomposition and fossilization, the researchers said. 

“This study is the first to demonstrate evidence for both keratin and melanosomes, using structural, chemical and molecular methods,” said study author Yanhong Pan, a researcher at the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“These methods have the potential to help us understand — on the molecular level — how and why feathers evolved in these lineages.”

This isn’t the first time that researchers have found ancient structures within fossils. Schweitzer and her colleagues have also found an 80-million-year-old blood vessel belonging to a duck-billed dinosaur, and collagen proteins from a Tyrannosaurus rex. Despite these discoveries, it would be extremely challenging to use these findings to clone a dinosaur, she said.

Amazingly Preserved Mummies in China Yield New Clues to Bronze Age Life

According to a Gizmodo report, an international team of researchers has analyzed the genomes of some of the oldest of the naturally preserved mummies from northwest China’s Xiaohe cemetery, which is located in the desert sands of the Tarim Basin. 

The remains, which date from 2,000 BCE to around 200 CE, are confounding for their remarkable state of preservation, luxurious clothing, and their burial in boat coffins among miles and miles of sand dunes, far from any sea.

The Tarim Basin mummies do not resemble modern inhabitants of the region, leading different groups of researchers to posit that they may have hailed from near the Black Sea, or been related to a group hailing from the Iranian Plateau.

Recently, an international team of researchers analyzed the genomes of some of the earliest mummies from the Tarim Basin.

They found that the people buried there did not migrate from the Black Sea steppes, Iran, or anywhere else—rather, the analysis suggests that they were direct descents of the Ancient North Eurasians (ANE), a human population widespread during the Pleistocene that is now mostly represented in genetic fragments in some populations’ genomes. The team’s research was published today in Nature.

“Archaeogeneticists have long searched for Holocene ANE populations in order to better understand the genetic history of Inner Eurasia.

We have found one in the most unexpected place,” said Choongwon Jeong, a co-author of the study and a geneticist at Seoul National University, in a Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology press release.

Being direct descendants of the Ancient North Eurasians, the people of the Tarim Basin didn’t mix with other populations in the vicinity. And there were plenty. 

The team compared the mummies’ genetics with those of a neighbouring group from the Dzungarian Basin, also called the Junggar Basin. Those 13 individuals descended from a combination of local populations and Western steppe herders linked to a different group, the Yamnaya.

Chao Ning, study author and an archaeologist at Peking University, said in the same release: “These findings add to our understanding of the eastward dispersal of Yamnaya ancestry and the scenarios under which admixture occurred when they first met the populations of Inner Asia.”

Looking at the mummies’ teeth revealed milk proteins, indicating that the population may have been pastoral dairy farmers. But they used millet from East Asia and medicinal plants from Central Asia, indicating that though there was not a mix of genes, there certainly was a sharing of goods across cultures.

“At present, we are unable to determine when precisely the Xiaohe groups acquired their distinctive cultural elements,” said Christina Warinner, co-author of the paper and an anthropologist at Harvard University and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.

“It appears that they had already learned to farm, herd, and dairy before moving into the Tarim Basin because we found that the founding population was already consuming dairy products. It is unknown where they lived before moving into the Tarim Basin, but their genetic profile and those of their admixed neighbours suggests that they were local to the general region.”

Though the Tarim Basin individuals were not genetically diverse, they were “culturally cosmopolitan,” Warinner said in an email to Gizmodo. They had fantastically woven clothing, beads and other decorative wares, and diversity of foodstuffs.

“Our findings of the Tarim mummies have raised numerous questions about the nature of Bronze Age population contact, trade, and interaction,” Warinner said. “We don’t have the answers yet, but we hope that continued archaeological research on the Xiaohe archaeological culture will begin to shed light on these topics.”

Some of the individuals look as if they died recently, with hair still on their heads, dyed clothing, and cashmere hats. And yet, it’s their genetic codes, invisible to the eye, that are revealing so much more about who these people were.