Archaeologists find the remains of 97 bodies in old Chinese house

In a very gruesome turn of events recently, researchers found a very rare finding in northeast China – an ancient house stuffed with 97 cadavers of people from different age groups.

The grisly discovery was made by scientists excavating a 5,000-year-old village in northeast China.

Some of the bodies discovered in the dwelling, dubbed F40, were deformed, which may have been caused by the beams falling to the ground because of a raging fire.

Experts say the scene could have been the result of a ‘prehistoric disaster, ‘ and say an epidemic of some sort may be responsible.

Scientists found the bodies of teenagers, young adults and middle aged men and women were packed into the tiny building, which was smaller than a modern-day squash court.

Archaeologists believe that the human remains found in northeast China were between the ages of 19 and 35. The way their bodies were piled on top of each other led them to believe that the virus was spreading at a faster rate than expected, and the villagers had no time to bury the dead. “But in the south, limb bones were discovered in a mess, forming two or three layers”, the archaeologists noted in their study. There is evidence that F40, which measures just 20 sq m in total, burned at some point – a lot of the bones are charred – but whether the fire was intentional or accidental remains an open question. This is evident in the deformities noticeable in some skulls and limb bones that were also charred to a certain extent.

The remains were never buried and were left behind for archaeologists to discover 5,000 years later. However, archaeologists at Jilin University – located in China – are studying the prehistoric remains to uncover what happened to the villagers.

The team has published a second study, in Chinese, in the Jilin University Journal – Social Sciences edition, on their finds.

The Jilin team found that the people in that house died as the result of a “prehistoric disaster” that resulted in dead bodies being stuffed into the house. This information was presented in a summary of the researchers’ findings for the 83rd Meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, that took place in 2014.

No remains of older adults were found. This could mean that Hamin Mangha experienced an outbreak of disease.

The excavation was carried out by researchers from the Inner Mongolian Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology of Jilin University.