Hanging coffins discovered in China: an ancient find with ancestors of people still living in the region

For centuries, the cliffs of southern China held an enigma: hundreds of coffins suspended from rock faces, silent witnesses to a funerary tradition as spectacular as it was misunderstood. Who were those peoples who defied gravity to honor their dead? The answer has just arrived, and not from archaeology, but from genetics.

China’s mysterious hanging coffins

A study published in Nature confirms that the Bo, a small ethnic group that survives today in the Yunnan province of China, are the direct descendants of those who practiced this custom more than 2,000 years. The researchers analyzed DNA from remains found at four sites with hanging coffins and compared it with the genomes of living individuals. The result was a genetic lineage that connects the Bo to Neolithic populations of southern China and Southeast Asia, revealing a cultural continuity of more than 4,000 years.

The practice, which ceased during the Ming Dynasty (14th-17th centuries), originated in the Wuyi Mountains of Fujian at least 3,400 years ago. Its influence spread to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Taiwan, where variations such as “log coffins” have been found in caves. Beyond the ritual, the discovery provides a key piece for understanding the history of the Tai-Kadai people, ancestors of millions in Asia.

Ancient chronicles described the raised coffins as “auspicious”, and folklore called the Bo “Children of the Cliffs” or “Subduers of the Sky”, even attributing to them the ability to fly. Today, science dismantles the myth and replaces it with something equally fascinating: the persistence of an identity that survived empires, borders, and centuries.

Why hang the dead? For the Bo, height was a symbol of protection and prestige. For us, it’s a window into the cultural diversity that shaped Asia. And now, thanks to genetics, we know that those traces are not only on the cliffs, but also in the blood of those who still call those mountains home.

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