1,300 years later, scientists paint the picture of a murder and a cover-up in China

The man had originally been believed to have been a grave-robber, who had fallen victim to accident or assault

But by analysing the crime scene, a team of scientists suggested something far more sinister, and he likely died centuries later

Reading Time:4 minutes

Scientists in have figured out the likely reason a man in China died 1,300 years ago. Photo credit: Qian Wang

Published: 6:00pm, 23 Oct 2021Updated: 9:37pm, 24 Oct 2021

Corrected [6:22pm, 24 Oct, 2021]

[6:22pm, 24 Oct, 2021]
An earlier version of this article misspelled the Shiyanzi cemetery as "Shyanxi".

He will not get the justice he deserved, but, thanks to new research from a team of scientists, we can now piece together the story of a man who was probably murdered 1,300 years ago in northwest China.

Furthermore, in investigating the case, scientists suggested the killer or killers tried to cover their tracks by “hiding a leaf in a forest”, or, to be more accurate, hiding the body in a graveyard to avoid detection.

In a report published in October in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences the team of scientists detailed how they were able to ascertain a series of events from 1,300 years ago.

The Tomb

The final resting place of the victim was a tomb in Shiyanzi cemetery, in the northwest autonomous region of Ningxia, which contained 10 other tombs.

The cemetery was first discovered in 2002 by people constructing a gas pipeline and was excavated twice, in 2009 and 2011. The tomb investigated in the report contained four people: a man, a woman, a juvenile and, separated from the rest of them, the body of the victim.

The layout suggested that the original inhabitants of the tomb were a family, but the other body seemed unrelated to them.

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