Study Reveals Mystery Behind The Ancient "Hanging Coffin"

Archaeologists have uncovered new evidence about China's mysterious hanging coffins, revealing a possible direct genetic connection between ancient practitioners and today's Bo people in Southwest China, reported Newsweek.

Hanging coffins, which were traditionally placed on cliff faces, have long been associated with the Bo ethnic group, believed to have disappeared after the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). This discovery sheds new light on the origins of the practice and its cultural significance.

Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and their colleagues analysed the genomes of 11 ancient individuals from four Hanging Coffin sites in China, four individuals from log coffin sites in Thailand, and 30 individuals from the modern Bo community.

Their results suggest that today's Bo people trace a large portion of their ancestry to those ancient Hanging Coffin practitioners.

The study also revealed that both ancient and modern groups are related to coastal Neolithic populations in Southeast Asia, the ancestors of today's Tai-Kadai and Austronesian-speaking communities.

The researchers also found that long-distance cultural and social contacts existed between Northeast Asian and Yellow River agricultural communities and Hanging Coffin groups more than 1,200 years ago, reflecting cultural assimilation during the Tang Dynasty.

Furthermore, shared gene relationships between the hanging coffin communities in China and the log coffin communities in Thailand suggest a common origin and a broader cultural and gene network across southern China and Southeast Asia.

The authors stated that genomic analysis can complement archaeological and historical records in understanding the hanging coffin tradition. However, they acknowledged some limitations, such as the lack of historical data from the earliest hanging coffin communities at Mount Wuyi and other sites in the islands of Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

They suggested that combining interdisciplinary scientific approaches with additional human remains and archaeological material could provide a more comprehensive understanding of the history of suspended wooden coffin burial practices in the future.

This research has proven to be an important step in understanding the genes and cultural history of the Bo people and their unique death traditions.