One of the rarest human fossils we have ever discovered turned up in Taiwan. 4,800 years old, it is about a mother hugging her child.
A team of researchers began an excavation campaign at An-ho , a Neolithic archaeological site located in the Taiwanese city of Taichung. Between 2014 and 2015 they were unearthing remains with which to study the area and its inhabitants. Although the site is currently ten kilometers from the coast, it is thought that during the time this mother and her child lived, the coastline of the island was different from what it is today, so An-ho would have been a coastal settlement. An idea that could be confirmed by the more than 200 shark teeth that researchers have found among the houses, ash deposits and tombs of the site. We humans usually have in our house and bury ourselves with objects that we value, so those shark teeth suggest that the sea was important to this population.
Dabenkeng culture: fishermen and farmers
In addition to the resources they could obtain from the sea, it is possible that these inhabitants of the central part of the island were the first farmers in Taiwan . They are identified as the Dabenkeng culture, who arrived on the island 5,000 years ago. This was reported by Chengwha Tsang of the Academia Sinica in Taiwan:
“The Dabenkeng were the first farmers in Taiwan, and they may have come from the southern and southeastern coasts of China, about 5,000 years ago. It is the oldest Neolithic culture that has been found so far in Taiwan.”
Excavations carried out throughout the campaign year uncovered human remains in a total of 48 burials . Among those found are five children, but, without a doubt, the most spectacular piece is the one whose protagonist is a woman holding a child in her arms. The fossil was transferred to the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Taiwan. Chu Whei-lee, curator of the museum’s Department of Anthropology, said of the find
“When it was unearthed, all the archaeologists and team members were shocked.
Why? Because the mother was looking at the baby in her hands.”
Mother and son
The fossil remains have been preserved well enough for us to clearly see the scene, in which it is difficult not to imagine what looks like an affectionate gesture between the woman and the baby. That is why it has been taken for granted that we are dealing with a mother and her son. The buried woman was young and the child in her arms was about six months old . It is unknown what could have caused the death of both. But these finds and the grave goods that accompanied the buried people are rich sources of information for studying Taiwan’s prehistoric past.
It is possible that the mother and her baby were buried in the house where they lived, a common custom among many past cultures around the world. But more research is needed to confirm this idea. What is evidence is that the bodies in the excavated tombs were buried in a north-south direction and with their backs to the bottom, their heads facing up from the tomb, unlike other Taichung burials, in which They found the bodies face down.
The research team was able to extract DNA from the remains, and its analysis will help study the Dabenkeng culture and its spread across Taiwan and other islands in Oceania .
References:
Drafting. 2022. The remains of a stone age mother are found cradling a baby. ngenespanol.com.
Drafting. 2016. A 4,800-year-old human fossil is found holding its child. abc.es