Victims of 2,100-Year-Old Massacre Identified

BAYANBULAG, MONGOLIA—Science reports that researchers have finally determined the identities of individuals found in a mysterious mass burial in Mongolia. The discovery was first made 16 years ago when archaeologists were investigating the Bayanbulag fortress north of China’s Great Wall. During the course of their work, they noticed human bones protruding from a nearby stream bank. Excavation revealed a gruesome grave containing 17 skeletons that showed signs of bludgeoning, dismemberment, and decapitation. Dating placed their deaths at around 2,100 years ago, a time when the area was on the front lines of the Han-Xiongnu Wars, a violent conflict between two powerful East Asian empires. It is likely that these individuals were victims of that conflict, but archaeologists could not tell on which side they had fought. Recent isotopic analysis and ancient DNA sequencing revealed that the deceased matched ancient populations that inhabited the Yellow River Basin in China, and that the soldiers had fought on behalf of the Chinese Han Dynasty (206 b.c.–a.d. 220). They were likely ambushed by a detachment of Xiongnu warriors near the fortress and massacred. Ultimately, though, the Han won out. “After 200 years of war, the Xiongnu were completely defeated and some of them fled to the West,” said Alexey Kovalev of the Russian Academy of Science’s Institute of Archaeology. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Journal of Archaeological Science. For more on the Xiongnu Empire and its wars against the Han Dynasty, go to "Tomb of the Silver Dragons," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2019.