Neolithic Chinese culture artifacts show systematic human bone modification

In a recent study by Dr. Sawada and his colleagues published in Scientific relationships183 human bones were studied, 52 of which have proven to work with human bones, which all belong to the Neolithic culture of Liangzhu.

The Liangzhu culture emerged about 5,300 to 4,500 years in the Yangzi river delta in southern China. Appointed for the modern site of Liangzhu, culture represents one of the oldest and the oldest and largest urban societies in ancient China.

Urban sites are generally surrounded by large enclosures and moats. In addition, urban sites have built dams, canals, altars, palaces, workshops and cemeteries, all indicating a high level of social stratification.

However, Dr. Sawada and his colleagues were interested in the unique phenomenon of human bone modification.

So found thrown into the channels and docions of Liangzhu culture, worked human bones represent the first and the only known case of human bone modification in Neolithic China.

According to Dr. Sawada, “so far, no archaeological material of the periods after the Liangzhu culture has been identified which continues this practice directly. However, … we find different treatments of the dead later through China, such as the custom of skull burials.”

As culture has no written files, the importance of bones, systems of religious beliefs and leaders of Liangzhu culture is unknown.

The majority of worked bones could be classified as cups of skulls, facial skulls in the shape of a mask, small fragments of skulls in the shape of a plate, skulls with posterior perforations, mandibles with flat mandibular bases and bones of the limbs with traces of work.

The analysis of Dr. Sawada and his colleagues concluded that the majority of bones did not seem to have an age or specific age preference, some having been obtained from children, adolescents and adults. In addition, men and women have undergone bone work.

A difference they have not seen were in bone pathology, indicating low nutritional health, perhaps because of these people belonging to lower social status.

In many cultures, worked human bones are the result of a complex relationship between the worker and work, associated with kinship and conflicts.

However, the lack of signs of violence and cup marks indicates that these worked bones were obtained during episodes of violence, perhaps linked to war or enmity.

In addition, the presence of many of these bones in Zhongjiagang, which served as a Liangzhu workshop, can suggest that these bones are the result of a standardized production process.

The absence of cup marks also indicates that they were not obtained by dismemberment but were probably collected after the decomposition of the soft tissues of the deceased. Below, the bones were worked.

Interestingly, the majority of these worked bones seem unfinished, about 80%, and have apparently been deliberately rejected in the channels of the pits.

This treatment of the dead contrasts directly with the previous periods in which the smaller communities have generally buried their deaths in formal burial contexts. This can be linked to a more strict and stricter social relationships in these previous societies.

However, with the advent of the Liangzhu culture much greater and less closely known, social ties seem to have undergone a fundamental transformation. Dr. Sawada and his colleagues propose that urbanization has changed the way the living saw the dead, especially those outside their immediate kinship networks.

These human bones were perhaps perceived as “others” and therefore did not offer the same commemoration and the cult of ancestors. The high proportion of unfinished worked bones suggests that these remains may not be rare or symbolically privileged materials, but rather easily available resources in a society where anonymous death had become commonplace.

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