mtDNA Evidence for a Diversified Origin of Workers Building Mausoleum for First Emperor of China

PLoS ONE ^ | Received: June 23, 2008; Accepted: September 4, 2008; Published: October 1, 2008 | see topic

[SunkenCiv]

Ying Zheng was the First Emperor of China, who ended the Warring States Period, established the first empire of China (Qin Dynasty) in 221 BC and died in 210 BC. According to historical records, it took 39 years and 720,000 workers to build an amazingly magnificent mausoleum... the population size of Qin Dynasty was twenty-two millions and it controlled a vast territory... Between February and March 2003, 121 human skeletons were excavated by a team from Archaeology Institute of Shannxi when cleaning up a Qin-Dynasty kiln 500 meters away from the site where Terra Cotta Warriors were found... Aiming at uncovering MBWs' origin from genetic information, we investigated mitochondrial lineages of these bone specimens under the hypothesis that MBSs were brought in from various geographic areas... It is likely that MBWs was an admixture of East Asians... According to phylogeny of mtDNA lineages... these 19 specimens of MBWs could be assigned to 15 east-Eurasia specific hgs. In particular, four specimens (M86, M60, M21 and M17), accounting for 21%, could be Han in origin, while three specimens... were likely from SM. Overall seven specimens... were likely originated from the south, while only one... was from the north... We therefore postulated that both Hans and minorities were recruited for building mausoleum, but many were from South China. This might, if not impossible, reflect the origin of 720,000 workers, provided that these 19 MBWs might be representative of them.

[SunkenCiv]

original title had to be shortened from:

"Mitochondrial DNA Evidence for a Diversified Origin of Workers Building Mausoleum for First Emperor of China"

author list wouldn't fit:

Zhi Xu, Fan Zhang, Bosong Xu, Jingze Tan, Shilin Li, Chunxiang Li, Hui Zhou, Hong Zhu, Jun Zhang, Qingbo Duan, Li Jin

[SunkenCiv]

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·
	Gods Graves Glyphs	Wow, there's nothin' to see here. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
· Google · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology magazine · Biblical Archaeology Society · · Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·

[JimSEA]

Interesting that a goodly number of “Barbarians” had the skills necessary to provide for the First Emperor.

[tbw2]

Or were just good enough to dig the ditches.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

It was an empire. Empires rule over different ethnic groups. So public work projects have workers from different ethnic groups.

Shocker!

[StayAt HomeMother]

“Interesting that a goodly number of “Barbarians” had the skills necessary to provide for the First Emperor.”

The article includes this passage, indicating they were not voluntary or skilled laborers: “Some bones were thickset with different extent of arthritis, and others bore fractures or obvious adaptation structures caused by intense pull from muscle, suggesting that these people were engaged in heavy work before death. Furthermore, given their casual and layer-on-layer burial accompanied by potsherds, iron tools, and several instruments of torture in a 10-meter deep tomb, they would have been of very low social status.”