People of “suspended coffins” in China finally identified. Descendants still live there

A DNA study has finally made it possible to identify people buried in “suspended coffins” thousands of years ago in China and Southeast Asia. Their descendants still live in the region.

For millennia, an ethnic group in present-day southwestern China placed their dead in “hanging coffins” carved into rocky cliffs, but the identity of these people remained a mystery for researchers.

A new genetic, recently published in Nature Communicationsnow reveals that this ancient funerary tradition was practiced by the ancestors of populations that still live in the region today.

The researchers also identified genetic links among ancient communities that followed the tradition of “hanging coffins” — in which wooden coffins were fixed to exposed cliffs — and Neolithic populations that lived in the coastal areas of southern China and Southeast Asia.

The findings “provide valuable clues about the genetic, cultural and historical roots of this funeral custom,” the authors write in the study.

Over the past 30 years, there have been documented hundreds of coffins suspended throughout China and Southeast Asia. Historical texts and oral traditions pointed to a small ethnic group known as “povo Bo” as responsible for this practice.

In the new study, however, the teamruns to genetics to try to solve the enigma definitively. In their research, scientists analyzed the DNA of 11 individuals, some of them over 2,000 years oldfrom four “hanging coffin” sites in China.

They complemented the study with the analysis of the remains of four individuals deposited in ancient “trunk coffins” discovered in a cave in northwestern Thailand — the oldest dated to around 2,300 years ago — and with 30 genomes of living people of Bo descent.

The results indicate that the populations of the “hanging coffins” — and, consequently, the current Bo — had genetic links to groups that lived between 4,000 and 4,500 years ago, during the Neolithic, a period that in this region extends from approximately 10,000 BC to around 2000 BC

“The genetic marks that remained constitute convincing evidence of a shared origin and cultural continuity that transcends modern national borders,” the researchers write.

Hanging coffins

Dozens of “hanging coffin” sites have been identified throughout southern China and Taiwan, where this burial style was once popular. However, this type of funeral disappeared hundreds of years ago, during China’s Ming dynasty, between 1368 and 1644, notes the .

Researchers point out that one of the first known references to these coffins, which dates back to Yuan dynastybetween around 1279 and 1368, states that “coffins placed at height are considered auspiciousthe higher they are, more propitious are for the dead. Furthermore, those whose coffins fell to the ground were considered even more fortunate.”

Currently, only a few thousand people of Bo ancestry live in Yunnan province in southern China, where they are officially classified as part of the Yi ethnic groupalthough their language and traditions are distinct, according to the study.

But their ancestral culture was once much broadercovering regions that are now part of Thailand, Laos, Vietnam and Taiwan, the researchers write. Everything indicates that the tradition of “suspended coffins” originated at least 3,400 years in the Wuyi Mountainsin Fujian province, southeast China.

Shared ancestry

Remains from ancient “log coffins” in northwestern Thailand also revealed notable genetic similarities with people buried in “suspended coffins”, the researchers concluded, which indicates common ancestors.

In Thailand, these coffins were made from the trunk of a treeopened longitudinally into two halves: one was excavated to form the coffin itself and the other served as a lid. The coffins were then placed inside caves, often supported by wooden structures or on high rock ledges.

These findings, along with data from other archaeological sites in Asia, suggest that the “hanging coffin” people were a branch of the ancient populations that spoke Tai-Kadai languages and that occupied a large part of southern China before the predominance of the Han ethnic groupfrom around the 1st century BC, the authors mention.

According to one published by Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, ancient speakers of the Tai-Kadai languages ​​(also known as language) gave its name to the modern nation of Thailand and are the ancestors of millions of no-han no on from China.

Mass main conclusion of the study it is in the ancient identity of the people of the “suspended coffins”, the researchers emphasize. Regional folklore referred to the Bo “with names like ‘Dominators of the Sky’ and ‘Children of the Cliffs’even going so far as to describe them as having the ability to fly.”

Now, genetics firmly links the Bo to the people buried in the hanging coffins. “About 600 years after this custom disappeared from historical records, we found that the Bo people are the direct descendants of practitioners of the Suspended Coffins tradition”, conclude the authors of the study.