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Published online: 22 October 2008 | doi:10.1038/nchina.2008.248

Chinese history: Mixed mausoleum makers

Tim Reid

Introduction

© (2008) istockphoto.com/Gautier Willaume

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis has provided forensic scientists with a valuable tool for determining the identity of an individual, by using DNA recovered from damaged, degraded, or very small biological samples. Li Jin at Fudan University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, both in Shanghai, and co-workers¹ have now used ancient mtDNA in 2,200-year-old human remains to determine the origins of slaves who built the mausoleum for Qin Shi Huang near Xi'an, the site where the Terracotta Army was found.

It is estimated that 720,000 workers — about 1/30 of the Qin Dynasty population at that time — took 39 years to complete the mausoleum. Historians believe that the slave workers must have originated from a widespread area, not just from the local populace.

Jin and co-workers sequenced mtDNA profiles from 19 worker skeletons found 500 metres away from the mausoleum site. The profiles were compared with over 2,000 mtDNA profiles from 32 modern-day Chinese populations.

The results showed that the workers came from very different sources, although over half were from southern populations. One specimen even had a genetic profile close to contemporary Japanese. Now the researchers plan to further analyse the workers using whole-genome and Y chromosome data, as recent migrations may have skewed the data of the modern-day Chinese population.

The authors of this work are from:
Ministry of Education (MOE) Key Laboratory of Contemporary Anthropology and Center for Evolutionary Biology, School of Life Sciences and Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China; Ancient DNA Laboratory, Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology, Jilin University, Changchun, China; Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China; Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Xi'an, China; Chinese Academy of Sciences and Max Planck Society (CAS–MPG) Partner Institute for Computational Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China.

Reference

1. Xu, Z. et al. Mitochondrial DNA evidence for a diversified origin of workers building mausoleum for first Emperor of China. PLoS ONE 3, e3275 (2008).  | Article | PubMed |