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Ancient DNA recovered from the remains of a sixth-century Chinese emperor who ruled during the country’s dark ages has shed some light on what the leader looked like.
Emperor Wu ruled China as part of the Northern Zhou dynasty from 560 to 580 and is credited with unifying the northern part of ancient China during a very chaotic period.
Archaeologists discovered his tomb in northwest China in 1996. In a study published Thursday in the journal Current Biology, researchers analyzed genetic material from his remains, which included a nearly complete skull. They found out about his appearance, health and ancestry.
The emperor belonged to a much-studied nomadic group known as the Xianbei, who lived in what is now Mongolia and northern and northeastern China. The analysis of the genome sequenced from the DNA indicated that Wu had brown eyes, black hair and dark to intermediate skin color.
“Some scholars said the Xianbei looked ‘alien’, like a thick beard, high nose bridge, and yellow hair,” Shaoqing Wen, study co-author and associate professor at Fudan University in Shanghai, said in a news release. “Our analysis shows that Emperor Wu had typical East or Northeast Asian facial features.”
The authors said they hoped ancient DNA could shed light on Wu’s cause of death. The emperor died suddenly at the age of 36, according to the study. Explanations for his demise put forward in historical texts include illness and deliberate poisoning.
The team was unable to find any conclusive evidence as to why he died. However, the researchers said they discovered a genetic susceptibility to stroke, which could explain some of the symptoms historians have attributed to Wu: droopy eyes, blindness and impaired gait.
Archaeologists are increasingly applying ancient DNA techniques to extract information from bones, teeth, artifacts and cave dirt.
Wu facial reconstruction
The team used genetic information from the remains, including Wu’s skull, to imagine what he would have looked like, creating a 3D facial reconstruction that humanizes the little-known figure.
“The study … provides interesting insights into the historical figure of Emperor Wu, and the facial approximation presented looks very realistic,” said Tobias Houlton, a lecturer in fossil identification and forensic imaging at the University of Dundee who worked on reconstructing the face of history. figures, by email. He was not involved in the study.
“In particular, color (skin, hair and eye) data cannot be predicted from skeletal remains alone, making genetic analysis an insightful tool.”
However, the study did not provide enough data about other morphological variables such as the thickness of the skin, the muscles and fat covering the facial bones, the placement and projection of the eyeball, the shape of the eyebrows, the width of the nose, and the height of the lips, factors can be counted. in facial reconstruction, Houlton said.
The Xianbei: A rare study group
More interesting than the appearance of the emperor is his Xianbei ancestry, said Jeong Hoongwon, an associate professor at Seoul University’s School of Biological Sciences. Jeong, who was not part of the new research, has studied the Xiongnu, a distinct nomadic empire that pushed China to build its Great Wall.
Genetic analysis showed that Emperor Wu intermarried with ethnic Han Chinese, the dominant ethnic group in China today.
“I think it’s important to understand the elite group he belonged to, which emerged as a fusion between Xianbei and local Han elite groups, rather than himself,” Jeong said via email. “This group has rarely been studied in genetics and this study provides one of the first cases of its kind.”
Jeong compared the Xianbei and the Xiongnu to Germanic tribes such as the Franks and the Goths who occupied parts of the Roman Empire as it collapsed.
He said it was significant that Emperor Wu had a relatively high percentage of ancestry from a group known as the ancient North Asians, since the Xianbei had been interacting with the dominant Chinese Han for centuries by then.
Wu ruled during a period of Chinese history often considered a “dark age of chaos,” with dynasties rising and falling rapidly, said Bryan Miller, assistant professor of Central Asian art and archeology at the University of Michigan. . Miller, who was not involved in the study, said it was a period of history worth further study.
“It’s interesting to see the genetic study, but none of the results of this genetic study are surprising,” Miller said. “We know that the great rulers were intermarrying, but what about the political substratum – to what extent were lower elites allowed to intermarry?
“I think that’s where genetics could start to tell an interesting story.”
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