Posted on 10/10/2008 6:58:25 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at plosone.org ...
"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
|
|||
Gods |
Wow, there's nothin' to see here. |
||
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
Or were just good enough to dig the ditches.
It was an empire. Empires rule over different ethnic groups. So public work projects have workers from different ethnic groups.
Shocker!
“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.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.