Ancient Chinese Silk Text Could Be “Oldest Surviving Anatomical Atlas In The World”

A series of 2,200-year-old Chinese texts, written on silk and found buried in ancient tombs, contains the oldest surviving anatomical atlas, scientists say. 

The texts were discovered in the 1970s within tombs at the site of Mawangdui in south-central China. The tombs belonged to Marquis Dai, his wife Lady Dai and their son.

The texts are challenging to understand, and they use the term “meridian” to refer to parts of the human body. In a paper recently published Sept. 1 in the journal The Anatomical Record, a research team led by Vivien Shaw, an anatomy lecturer at Bangor University in Wales in the United Kingdom, argues that these texts “are the oldest surviving anatomical atlas in the world.”

Additionally the texts “both predate and inform the later acupuncture texts, which have been the foundation for acupuncture practice in the subsequent two millennia,” the researchers wrote in the study.

The find “challenges the widespread belief that there is no scientific foundation for the ‘anatomy of acupuncture,’ by showing that the earliest physicians writing about acupuncture were in fact writing about the physical body,” they added.

Challenging texts

The texts, which are written in Chinese characters, are difficult to understand. “The skills necessary to interpret them are diverse, requiring the researcher firstly to read the original Chinese, and secondly to perform the anatomical investigations that allow a re-viewing of the structures that the texts refer to,” the researchers wrote in the paper. 

But if the texts are read carefully, it can be seen that the “meridians” refer to parts of the human body. For example, the text says (in translation) that one meridian starts “in the centre of the palm, goes along the forearm between the two bones following straight along with the tendons, travels below the sinew into the bicep, to the armpit, and connects with the heart.” The researchers contend that this description of a “meridian” actually refers to the path of the ulnar artery, the main blood vessel of the forearm. 

Another example from the ancient text describes a “meridian” in the foot that “starts at the big toe and runs along the medial surface of the leg and thigh. Connects at the ankle, knee, and thigh. It travels along with the adductors of the thigh, and covers the abdomen.” This “meridian” actually describes the “pathway of the long saphenous vein,” the conduit that carries blood from the legs back to the heart, the researchers wrote. 

The team concludes that the texts “represent the earliest surviving anatomical atlas, designed to provide a concise description of the human body for students and practitioners of medicine in ancient China.” 

Although the human body and ancestral remains were considered sacred in ancient China, the remains of lawbreakers were not always given this honour.

The researchers believe that ancient Chinese medical researchers dissected the corpses of prisoners to help them understand human anatomy. For instance, the Han Shu (Book of Han), a tome that covers the history of the Han Dynasty, records the dissection of the criminal Wang Sun-Qing in A.D. 16, the researchers noted in the study.

Until now, the oldest known anatomical atlas of the human body was thought to be from Greece, done by ancient Greek physicians such as Herophilus (335–280 B.C.) and Erasistratus (304-c.250 B.C.) however most of their texts have been lost and are known only from what other ancient writers wrote about them. As a result, the Chinese texts are the earliest surviving anatomical atlas, the researchers said. 

Vivienne Lo, a senior lecturer and convenor of University College London’s China Centre for Health and Humanity who is not affiliated with the research, said that she is hesitant to use the word “atlas” to describe these texts, and thinks that “map” or “chart” is a more appropriate term.

Lo said that the term “atlas” was a term that was used more during the 17th and 18th centuries and doesn’t seem appropriate to apply to a 2,200-year-old text. Lo also noted that some of the finds discussed in the paper — such as that prisoners were dissected to provide anatomical information — have been published by other researchers before.

TJ Hinrichs, a history professor at Cornell University who has conducted research into ancient Chinese medicine but is not affiliated with this research, also did not think that “anatomical atlas” was an appropriate term to describe these texts. Live Science has reached out to other experts not affiliated with the research, however, most were not able to reply at the time of publication. 

Ancient Chinese women faced brutal ‘yue’ punishment, had foot cut off, and a skeleton reveals

Nearly 3,000 years ago, the foot of a Chinese woman was cut off in an amputation — probably not for a medical condition, but as punishment for committing a criminal act, a new study of her bones suggests. It’s one of the few times archaeologists have discovered evidence of yue, an ancient Chinese punishment. 

Various clues hint that the woman’s foot was cut off as yue: her bones show no signs of any disease that could have made such an amputation necessary; and it seems the injury was roughly made, rather than with the precision of a medical amputation. 

The researchers considered other possibilities for how the woman might have lost her foot, such as from an accident, a war injury or a surgical procedure, study lead author Li Nan, an archaeologist at Peking University in China, told Live Science. But “after careful observation and media discussions, our research team ruled out other possibilities and agreed that punitive amputation is the best interpretation,” she told Live Science in an email.

The yue punishment was common in ancient China for over 1,000 years, until it was abolished in the second century B.C., according to a 2019 study in the Tsinghua China Law Review. At the time the woman was living, up to 500 different offenses could result in having a foot amputated, including rebelling, cheating, stealing and even climbing over certain gates, Li said. 

But nothing about the woman’s skeleton suggests what she was punished for: “We have no clue what kind of crime she committed,” she said.

Five punishments

According to historians, yue was one of the “five punishments for slaves” enforced since the second millennium B.C. by emperors of the Xia dynasty, the first dynasty of ancient China. There is extensive historical evidence of the practice, and a Chinese official in the first millennium B.C. complained of the need to find special shoes for amputees.

Minor crimes were punished with beatings, but offenders who committed severe crimes could be sentenced to one of the five punishments: mo, where the face or forehead was tattooed in indelible ink; yi, in which the offender’s nose was cut off; yue, the amputation of the feet (some of the worst offenders had both feet cut off); and gōng, a brutally complete castration.

The fifth was da pi, a death sentence that could be carried out by beheading, if you were lucky — alternatives included being boiled alive and being torn limb from limb by horses, according to a 1975 study in the Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law.

Chinese tradition records that the five punishments were in force until they were abolished in the second century B.C. by the Han dynasty’s Emperor Wen, who replaced them with a system of fines, floggings, hard labour and exile; the worst criminals were simply executed.

Li said the woman’s skeleton was found in a tomb at the Zhouyuan site in China’s northwestern Shaanxi province in 1999. The tomb dates from between 2,800 and 3,000 years ago when Zhouyuan was the region’s largest and most important city.

The skeleton’s missing foot was largely overlooked initially, but a new examination of the remains reveals more about the woman’s life, Li said. 

Anatomical analysis revealed that the woman was between 30 and 35 years old when she died, and that — apart from her missing foot — she was in good health. She seems to have suffered no disease after the amputation, which suggests that she was cared for; and the growth of the remaining leg bones indicates the woman lived for about another five years before she died.

Only a few shells were found in her tomb, which might indicate that she lived in poverty, and she was probably buried by members of her family, Li said.

Old bones

The woman’s bones didn’t show signs of any diseases that might have made a foot amputation necessary, such as diabetes, leprosy or cancer; and there was no evidence of frostbite or burns.

In addition, there seem to be few good explanations of how it could have happened by accident. “If she was attacked or fell from a high place, it didn’t make sense that she only lost her right foot without other injuries,” Li said.

A critical clue was that the amputation seems to have been the result of an inexpert or perhaps remorseless action — something that can be seen in the bones that remain, including what’s left of the tibia, or shinbone.

“The cutting surface of her right tibia was not smooth and marked malunion [a badly-healed fracture] was observed,” Li said. “A surgical amputation could do much better at that time.”

The Zhouyuan amputation is the earliest evidence of yue yet found. But researchers have reported seeing mutilated skeletons with similar injuries in ancient graves, and it’s possible that older examples will be identified, Li said: “The point is not finding, but identifying.” 

The study was published earlier this month in the journal Acta Anthropologica Sinica.