Excavated tombs of Peru's Moche priestesses provide archaeologists with troves of artifacts, data

When archaeologists unearthed a large chamber tomb in San José de Moro, a ceremonial center of pre-Columbian Moche civilization on the northern coast of Peru, they found the remains of a woman who had been laid to rest with lavish offerings, befitting a priestess or a queen or both.

Excavated in 2013, the burial featured a richly decorated coffin covered with copper plaques, and inside it a skeleton, buried 1,200 years ago, along with precious pottery vessels, a ceremonial knife, and a silver goblet, all telling signs of the power the woman had wielded in life.

The discovery of the splendid burial shattered archaeologists' notions about the Moche, which until recently had been perceived as a society ruled by male warriors, said Peruvian archaeologist Luis Castillo, the 2016 Robert F. Kennedy Visiting Professor in Latin American Studies Lecture.

"When I started as a young student, 25, 30 years ago, we thought the Moche was a culture led by powerful kings, warriors, or priests," Castillo said at the Harvard Peabody Museum, where he taught a course on the rise and the fall of the Moche. The royal tomb, the eighth found in 25 years, was discovered by the San José de Moro Archaeological Program, which is shepherded by Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and headed by Castillo. All eight tombs showcased women wearing rich headdresses and beaded necklaces, and surrounded by sacrifice victims and exquisite relics including silver goblets. Called the priestesses of San José de Moro, they highlight the prominent role of women in Moche society.

"These women were among the most important individuals in their society," said Castillo. "Their elaborate burials are narratives of their lives, and the ornaments they were buried with are indicators of their high status."

Archaeologists believe that the women were priestesses because of their resemblance to figures depicted in rituals scenes found on Moche art. The Moche had no written language but left thousands of ceramic vessels with intricate drawings portraying their daily lives and their cosmological beliefs. In those depicting human sacrifice, a priestess wears a headdress and holds a silver goblet filled with victims' blood.

Regarded as the first state-level civilization in the Americas, the Moche flourished and ruled the northern coast of Peru before the Incas, between the first and eighth centuries, at the same time the Mayas thrived in Mexico and Central America. They dominated the desert through a complex irrigation system, built adobe pyramids, and, like many ancient cultures, used religion to unify society.

The finding of the priestesses of San José de Moro has taken place amid a backdrop of other excavations that have made the Moche an electrifying subject of archaeological research.

In 1987, Peruvian archaeologists found the regal tomb of the Señor de Sipan, which has been compared to King Tutankhamen's tomb in Egypt. And in 2006, they discovered a well-preserved mummy buried with magnificent objects and two ceremonial war clubs in Cao, a town on the northern coast of Peru. A warrior queen, the Señora de Cao, is considered the first female ruler of pre-Hispanic Peru and is believed to have reigned 1,700 years ago.

In the wake of the recent discoveries, archaeologists are also dropping a widely held belief that the Moche in northern Peru were a unified empire led by a single ruler.

"They were multiple polities, small chiefdoms that never achieved a political unification," said Castillo, Peru's former vice minister of culture. "Some communities may have been led by women and others by men."

Studies of the remains of Moche priestesses show they were physically strong and well-fed, another clue to their status and nobility, which may have influenced their positions of power in society.

Many pieces of Moche art are on display in museums around the world, including a permanent exhibit of Moche ceramics at the Peabody Museum, but with the growing interest in that culture, the mystery around the Moche elite women persists.

"They were not the sisters, the mothers, or the wives of somebody powerful," Castillo said. "In all the burials, the women had a status associated with Moche priests. They were priestesses, but they could have also been rulers. In ancient cultures, political and religious power were blended, and the rulers were often the priests."
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Reference:

Mineo, Liz. Phys.org. 2016. “Excavated tombs of Peru's Moche priestesses provide archaeologists with troves of artifacts, data”. Phys.org. Posted: July 20, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-07-excavated-tombs-peru-moche-priestesses.html

Facts on Tutankhamun's tomb

Specialists believe two rooms might be hidden inside the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, which was built some 3,300 years ago in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor.

Here are key facts about the site.

Untouched treasure

In November 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the tomb along with its treasure of more than 5,000 objects, many in solid gold. The tomb was nearly intact and it took Carter six years to excavate, with funding from Britain's Lord George Carnarvon.

The treasure was laid out in five rooms and included thrones, statues, furniture and arms.

The walls of the chamber in which Tutankhamun lay were covered in gold, and his coffin was a three-piece sarcophagus of which the outermost was in red quartzite and the innermost was 110 kilograms (240 pounds) of solid gold.

The pharaoh, who died in 1324 BC at the age of 19, had a funeral mask that was also made from gold, inlaid with lapis lazuli. Its eyes were made of obsidian and quartz. The mask has become one of the world's most widely-recognized Egyptian artifacts.

It took Carter 10 years to complete his exploration of the tomb and catalogue the thousands of objects that he found. Lord Carnarvon died In April 1923 in mysterious circumstances, fuelling speculation that the fabled "curse of the pharaohs" had struck one of those responsible for violating "King Tut's" tomb.

A child pharaoh

The discovery made Tutankhamun, who died after just nine years on the throne, one of Egypt's best-known pharaohs. In 2010, a study of DNA tests and CT scans concluded that he suffered from an often-fatal form of malaria and a club foot that caused him to walk with a cane.

Tutankhamun's reign coincided with a troubled time in Egyptian history known as the Amarna period, during which the pharaoh Akhenaten tried to radically transform religion to focus on just one god, Aton.

The DNA tests showed that Tutankhamun was Akhenaten's son, but not that of Nefertiti, an influential wife of the pharaoh celebrated for her beauty.

In fact, his mother is now believed to have been Akhenaten's sister.

Tutankhamun sired two children, both girls, but they died in the womb, the study found. King Tut's mummy is now on display in Luxor.

What's in the two rooms?

Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mamduh al-Damati told reporters Thursday that preliminary scans of Tutankhamun's tomb revealed "two hidden rooms behind the burial chamber" of the boy king that appeared to contain "some organic and metal material".

British archaeologist Nicholas Reeves believes that Nefertiti's tomb might be in a secret chamber adjoining that of King Tut.
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Reference:

Phys.org. 2016. “Facts on Tutankhamun's tomb”. Phys.org. Posted: March 17, 2016. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2016-03-facts-tutankhamun-tomb.html

Archaeologists Find World’s Oldest Tea in the Tomb of a Han Dynasty Emperor

Archaeologists exploring a nearly 2,200-year-old Chinese tomb belonging to an emperor of the Han Dynasty recently stumbled on a treasure: the oldest tea ever found. This new find not only provides new evidence that ancient Chinese royalty drank tea, but could reveal new details about the history of the Silk Road.

The ancient tea was discovered in the Han Yang Lin Mausoleum, a tomb built for the ancient Han emperor Jing Di near the modern-day city of Xi’an in western China. When the tomb was excavated during the 1990’s, archaeologists discovered many treasures, including pottery figures, weapons, and even several chariots complete with horses.

Alongside these relics, the researchers also discovered a mass of partially-decomposed plants. Some of these 2,150-year-old remains were preserved so well that researchers could identify grains like millet and rice. But it took a team of scientists armed with specialized equipment decades to realize that this mysterious brick of plant matter was actually ancient tea, Sarah Laskow reports for Atlas Obscura.

“The discovery shows how modern science can reveal important previously unknown details about ancient Chinese culture,” Dorian Fuller, Director of the International Center for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology in London, who was not involved in the study, tells David Keys for the Independent. “The identification of the tea found in the emperor’s tomb complex gives us a rare glimpse into very ancient traditions which shed light on the origins of one of the world’s favorite beverages.”

Archaeologists exploring a nearly 2,200-year-old Chinese tomb belonging to an emperor of the Han Dynasty recently stumbled on a treasure: the oldest tea ever found. This new find not only provides new evidence that ancient Chinese royalty drank tea, but could reveal new details about the history of the Silk Road.

The ancient tea was discovered in the Han Yang Lin Mausoleum, a tomb built for the ancient Han emperor Jing Di near the modern-day city of Xi’an in western China. When the tomb was excavated during the 1990’s, archaeologists discovered many treasures, including pottery figures, weapons, and even several chariots complete with horses.

Alongside these relics, the researchers also discovered a mass of partially-decomposed plants. Some of these 2,150-year-old remains were preserved so well that researchers could identify grains like millet and rice. But it took a team of scientists armed with specialized equipment decades to realize that this mysterious brick of plant matter was actually ancient tea, Sarah Laskow reports for Atlas Obscura.

“The discovery shows how modern science can reveal important previously unknown details about ancient Chinese culture,” Dorian Fuller, Director of the International Center for Chinese Heritage and Archaeology in London, who was not involved in the study, tells David Keys for the Independent. “The identification of the tea found in the emperor’s tomb complex gives us a rare glimpse into very ancient traditions which shed light on the origins of one of the world’s favorite beverages.” In the study, published in Nature’s open access journal, Scientific Reports, the researchers note that although the first unambiguous written reference to tea dates back to 59 B.C., the exact origins of one of the world’s most popular beverages is still a mystery.

It’s popularity among the western Uighur people and northern Chinese is generally attributed to the Tang Dynasty that ruled during the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., and the previous oldest sample of tea remains dates back to about 1,000 years ago.

The researchers identified the remains as tea leaves by examining the tiny crystals on their surface, according to the study. This showed that the tea was likely a particularly fine one made from young, unopened tea buds and dates back to around 141 B.C., when Emperor Jing Di died and was sealed in his tomb.

This discovery not only indicates that Jing Di was a big tea drinker, but suggests that tea was already being exported to Tibet along trade routes that may have helped blaze the trail for the Silk Road, which starts in Xi’an, Laskow reports. But while these details help paint a clearer picture of how tea became so popular, for now, its origins are still shrouded in mystery.
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Reference:

Lewis, Danny. 2016. “Archaeologists Find World’s Oldest Tea in the Tomb of a Han Dynasty Emperor”. Smithsonian Magazine. Posted: January 13, 2016. Available online: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-find-worlds-oldest-tea-tomb-han-dynasty-emperor-180957790/?no-ist

Perfect pre-Roman era tomb discovered at Pompeii

Archaeologists have discovered a Pre-Roman era tomb in perfect condition at Pompeii, the team at the archaeological site buried in a 79AD volcanic eruption announced Monday.

"Pompeii continues to be an inexhaustible source of scientific discoveries," Massimo Osanna, superintendent at the ancient city site, said in a statement.

The tomb, unearthed by a team from the French Jean Berard Centre in Naples in southern Italy, dates back to the Samnite era, and is located at the Herculaneaum Gate at Pompeii.

The Samnites were a group of tribes involved in fierce battles with the Romans in the fourth century BC. The tomb contained a number of vases and amphoras in perfect condition which give a rare insight into the funerary practices of that era in Pompeii.

This discovery allows us "to carry out research on a historical period which has been relatively unexplored until now at Pompeii" said Osanna, an archaeologist who was appointed Pompeii's superintendent two years ago after great controversy over the state of maintenance at the vast site.

"These excavations prove that the city of Pompeii is still alive and that we must preserve it as it continues to provide us with material for research," said Osanna.

The ancient Roman city was frozen in time after Mount Vesuvius erupted on August 24 79AD. With 2.7 million visitors in 2014 it is the second most visited attraction in Italy after the Colosseum in Rome. Thousands of archaeologists and experts are currently working on excavation and restoration projects at the site.
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Reference:

Phys.Org. 2016. “Perfect pre-Roman era tomb discovered at Pompeii”. Phys.Org. Posted: September 21, 2015. Available online: http://phys.org/news/2015-09-pre-roman-era-tomb-pompeii.html

Burned Bones in Alexander the Great Family Tomb Give Up Few Secrets

It's a mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes, with a backstory that puts "Game of Thrones" to shame: Who was laid to rest in a lavish, gold-filled Macedonian tomb near Vergina, Greece? The tomb, discovered in 1977, might be the final resting place of Philip II of Macedon, conqueror of Greece and father of Alexander the Great, who would push his father's empire to the edge of India. 

Or, it might be the grave of the distinctly less impressive Philip III Arrhidaios (also written as Arrhidaeus), the half brother of, and figurehead successor to, Alexander the Great. 

The latest volley in the debate over which Philip occupies the tomb makes a case for the illustrious Philip II, arguing that the woman found interred alongside the much-debated male body was too old to have been the younger Philip's wife. But this new research seems unlikely to resolve the great Macedonian tomb mystery.

A complicated history

Archaeologists discovered the contentious tomb in 1977. Amid paintings and pottery was a gold sarcophagus containing a man's cremated bones. Nearby were the even-more-fragmentary burned bones of a woman. 

The tomb's discoverers declared the man was Philip II, who took the throne of Macedonia in 359 B.C. as regent for his infant nephew. Displaying the kind of initiative that defined the Macedonian royal family, Philip II quickly took the throne for himself and started conquering his neighbors. 

This went well until 336 B.C., when one of Philip II's bodyguards assassinated him as he walked into a theater in the Macedonian capital of Aegae. It's not entirely clear why the king was murdered; ancient historians told various tales, including one in which the murderer was a former male lover of Philip who had hounded another of Philip's male lovers to suicide and then was himself subjected to sexual assault by one of Philip's in-laws as revenge for that suicide. Some argued that Philip's fourth wife, Olympias, who was rumored by the historian Plutarch to sleep with snakes, had something to do with it. 

Regardless of whether Olympias was that diabolical, she certainly knew how to play politics — with bloody results. The queen moved quickly to put her own son, Alexander, on the throne. She arranged for Philip's two children by another wife, Cleopatra Eurydice, to be killed; Cleopatra Eurydice committed suicide by force soon after. Archaeologists who argue that the tomb at Vergina contains Philip II's bones have argued that the female remains found in the tomb belong to Cleopatra Eurydice.

But not everyone believed the bones matched those of Philip II. In 1981, a further examination of the remains led to claims that the body instead belonged to Philip III Arrhidaios. After Alexander the Great died in 323 B.C. (under mysterious circumstances, naturally), Philip III Arrhidaios took the throne as a figurehead, with his niece and wife Eurydice (not the same person as his father’s seventh wife) as queen. Ancient historians described Philip III Arrhidaios as mentally unfit. Plutarch blamed Olympias for the mental issues, claiming she'd tried to poison Arrhidaios as a child, but Plutarch clearly was not Olympias' biggest fan, and modern historians are skeptical. 

Eurydice, however, was a force to be reckoned with. Her attempts to grab real power put her on a collision course with Olympias and her allies. In 317 B.C., during a war over secession, Olympias' forces defeated the king and queen — Philip III Arrhidaios and Eurydice. He was executed, and she was forced to commit suicide. As if that weren't enough indignity, their bodies were dug up more than a year later and cremated for a royal funeral meant to shore up legitimacy for the next king.  

Archaeological arguments

Much of the debate around whether the tomb belongs to Philip II or Philip III Arrhidaios has focused on the burned bones. In the 1980s, Jonathan Musgrave, an anatomist at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, created a facial reconstruction of the skull and argued that a notch in the bone over one eye matched historical descriptions of one of Philip II's battle wounds. In 2000, Greek paleoanthropologist Antonis Bartsiokas published a paper in the journal Science arguing that the bone notch and other features Musgrave had highlighted were simply incidental to cremation. (Musgrave does not agree.) 

Another line of debate questions whether the bones show signs of warping, which occurs when flesh-covered bodies are cremated. If the bones of Philip III Arrhidaios were dug up and cremated months after the king's death, they might show less warping, or at least a different warping pattern compared with what would be found if the bones were cremated immediately. 

Much of this argument falls by the wayside in the new paper, recently accepted for publication by the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. The researchers, led by Theodore Antikas of Aristotle University in Greece, conducted a five-year forensic study of the bones, including computed tomography (CT) scans. 

The researchers argue that the bones of the man and the woman were, in fact, cremated with the flesh still on; however, because Philip III Arrhidaios was not in the ground long enough to become completely skeletal before exhumation, this does little to distinguish the two men. 

The new study likewise fails to find any evidence of an eye wound in the male skull, though the researchers did find a healing wound in the hand that might match one of Philip II's battle injuries. The male body also had growths called Schmorl's nodes on his lower vertebrae, a telltale sign of bone stress from horseback riding. 

With no smoking guns to identify the male skeleton, the team turned to the female bones. Here, they argue, was a 30- to 34-year-old woman, also a horseback rider, who had a fractured leg bone that would have caused her left leg to be shorter than her right. Tellingly, a set of leg armor, or greaves, found in the tomb appears to be made to fit someone with a shortened left leg, Antikas wrote. This suggests the tomb artifacts, including a quiver holding 74 arrowheads, belonged to the woman buried in the tomb, pointing to her identity as a Scythian princess married to Philip II in 339 B.C. Scythia was a kingdom comprising what is now Central Asia and parts of Eastern Europe.

"The gorytus, arrowheads, spears and everything in the antechamber belong to a Scythian warrior woman and NOT to Philip or any other woman but the seventh wife/concubine, namely the daughter of King Ateas," Antikas wrote in an email to Live Science. (A gorytus is a case for bows and arrows.) Antikas declined to comment on other aspects of the study. If he’s right, however, the woman in the tomb is not the Macedonian Cleopatra Eurydice, but another, foreign bride of Philip II’s. 

Bone backlash

But the move toward identifying the tomb's occupants based on the female skeleton rather than the male one brings its own controversy. 

"Frankly, I am disappointed that the International Journal of Osteoarchaeology has published this article," said Maria Liston, an anthropologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario who studiescremated remains in Greece. "I don't think it makes a substantive contribution to this debate, and it certainly does not refute the position of those who say the skeleton is not Philip II."

Among the problems with the new research, Liston said, is an overconfident approach to aging the skeletons. The researchers looked at the pubic symphysis, the cartilage-padded joint of the pubic bone, to peg the woman's age at between 30 and 34 years. But the method they used can't possibly determine age to that level of precision, Liston said. Rather, it can pinpoint the woman's age only to between 21 and 53 years old, she said. 

The researchers also found that the sternal end of the clavicle, the end near the breastbone, was fused. But that fusion blows their case out of the water, Liston said, because the bones begin to fuse by 19 or 20 years old and are usually done fusing within a few years, and are always fused entirely by age 29. 

"It can't be the age they're saying," Liston told Live Science. If the woman was younger than 29, as the clavicle fusion suggests, she could well be Philip III Arrhidaios' wife Eurydice, who was only about 20 when she died. 

Even the broken leg doesn't seal the case, Liston said. She's not convinced the asymmetrical greaves are made for someone with legs of two different lengths — one may simply have a lengthened flange that flared over the ankle, providing the leading leg with an extra bit of protection. Thus, the greaves may not belong to the woman in the tomb at all. 

Other archaeologists contacted by Live Science declined to comment, citing the preliminary nature of the paper (the journal has not yet released a final version of the publication) or unfamiliarity with the burial context. The tombs at Vergina are an important cultural and tourist site in Greece and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which raises the stakes of what would otherwise be a largely academic debate. The museum at Aigai, which oversees the tombs, refers to the tomb as Philip II's without caveat, as does UNESCO. But among archaeologists, nothing is settled. 

"We're never going to build a case that it's Philip II or Philip III that we could go into court and say, 'We have a positive ID,'" Liston said. She understands the draw of giving the skeleton a name, however. 

"I'm as subject as anyone to the thrill of touching the past," she said. But whether the skeleton is Philip II or Philip III, she said, it's rare and exciting to be able to identify so closely a set of bones from more than 2,000 years ago — and either way, the tomb's occupant was a Macedonian royal.  

"Frankly, to me, whoever it is, it's really cool," Liston said. 
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Reference:

Pappas, Stephanie. 2015. “Burned Bones in Alexander the Great Family Tomb Give Up Few Secrets”. Live Science. Posted: June 11, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/51172-alexander-the-great-family-tomb-mystery.html

Gold-Filled Tomb of Chinese 'Survivor' Mom Discovered

A Ming Dynasty tomb containing gold treasures has been discovered at a construction site in Nanjing, China. However, the real treasures may be two stone epitaphs that tell the story of the person buried there — Lady Mei, a woman who went from being a concubine to becoming a political and military strategist. 

The epitaphs, found inside the brick tomb, reveal that Lady Mei was a 21-year-old "unwashed and unkempt" woman who "called herself the survivor." Later she became the mother of a duke who ruled a province in southwest China. Lady Mei came to wield much power, providing her son with "strategies for bringing peace to the barbarian tribes and pacifying faraway lands," according to the epitaphs, which were translated from Chinese.

The treasures in her more than 500-year-old tomb include goldbracelets, a gold fragrance box and gold hairpins, all inlaid with a mix of gemstones, including sapphires, rubies and turquoise.

Archaeologists from Nanjing Municipal Museum and the Jiangning District Museum of Nanjing City excavated the tomb in 2008, and their findings were recently translated into English and published in the journal Chinese Cultural Relics. Lady Mei's coffin was damaged by water, but her skeletal remains were found.

From "survivor" to "dowager duchess"

Researchers say that Lady Mei was one of three wives of Mu Bin, a Duke of Qian who ruled Yunnan, a province in southwest China on the country's frontier.

Born in 1430, she probably would have been about 15 years old when she married the duke, who would've been more than 30 years older than her, researchers say.

She probably didn't enjoy the same status as his other two wives. "Lady Mei was probably a concubine whom he married after he went to guard and rule Yunnan," wrote researchers in the journal article.

But while Lady Mei was a concubine, her own family appears to have had some wealth: Her great-great grandfather "Cheng" was a general who "won every battle" and was granted a fiefdom over "1,000 households," read the epitaphs.

Lady Mei's life changed when she gave birth to the duke's son, Mu Zong, who was 10 months old when the duke died. The newly widowed Lady Mei "was only 21 years of age. She was unwashed and unkempt, and called herself the survivor," the epitaphs say.

She took charge of Mu Zong's upbringing, grooming him to be the next duke.

"She raised the third-generation duke. She managed the family with strong discipline and diligence, and kept the internal domestic affairs in great order, and no one had any complaint," the epitaphs read.

Lady Mei "urged him to study hard mornings and evenings, and taught him loyalty and filial devotion, as well as services of duty."

When Mu Zong came of age, he and Lady Mei traveled to meet the emperor, who charged him with controlling Yunnan, the province his father had ruled. The emperor was pleased with Lady Mei and, sometime after the meeting, awarded her the title of "Dowager Duchess," according to the epitaphs.

As Mu Zong began his rule over Yunnan, he relied on his mother for advice.

"Every morning when the third-generation duke got up, after taking care of official business, he returned to pay respect to the Dowager Duchess in the main hall," the epitaphs read.

"The Dowager Duchess would always talk to the third-generation duke about her loyalty to the emperor, and kind concerns for the people under the rule of the departed former duke, and strategies for bringing peace to the barbarian tribes and pacifying faraway lands."

Lady Mei's death

Lady Mei died at age 45 in the year 1474. The epitaphs say that she passed away of illness in southern Yunnan and was brought to Nanjing for burial.

"On the day of her death, the people of Yunnan, military servicemen or civilians, old and young, all mourned and grieved for her as if their own parents had passed away," the epitaphs read.

"When the obituary reached the imperial court, the emperor sent out officials and ordered them to consecrate and prepare for the funeral and burial."

The epitaphs praise her role in nurturing the young duke and preparing him for the responsibilities of ruling Yunnan. "Using her love and her hard work, she raised and educated the child, and brought him up to be a man of ability and good moral character …" the epitaphs read.

"Why did heaven bestow all the virtues upon her, while being so ungenerous as not to give her more years to live?" the epitaphs ask. "Although the will of heaven is remote and profound, it needs to be spread among millions of people."

The team's report was initially published, in Chinese, in the journal Wenwu. The excavation crew chief was Haining Qi.
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Reference:

Jarus, Owen. 2015. “Gold-Filled Tomb of Chinese 'Survivor' Mom Discovered”. Live Science. Posted: May 13, 2015. Available online: http://www.livescience.com/50817-ming-dynasty-tomb-gold-discovered.html

Amateur Explorers Are Using High-Res Satellite Images to Search for Genghis Khan's Tomb

Amateur explorers used ultra-high resolution satellite images to help search for the grave of one of the world’s most powerful rulers

hat do you do when you want to find a hidden burial site without disrespecting the people and culture that revere it? Look towards space and the Internet, suggests a recently published study.

The tomb of Genghis Khan—Mongolian ruler, warrior, and ancestor to an estimated one out of every 200 humans alive today—has been a mystery for almost as long as the man has been buried. Legend has it that when he died in 1227, soldiers killed the tomb builders as well as every person the funeral procession passed. Then, it is said, the soldiers themselves were killed so that no one who knew the tomb’s location would live to share it.

The mystery of the gravesite was noted as early as the 13th century, and several sites in Mongolia have been identified as likely burial locations. But much of that land is considered sacred to modern Mongolians, and previous attempts to excavate were heatedly protested.

Thanks to technology, however, researchers can now search for the tomb without digging.

As Ben Richmond writes on Motherboard, starting in June 2010, Albert Yu-Min Lin, a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and his team invited any interested Internet sleuth to scan ultra-high resolution images taken from orbital satellites to search for “out of the ordinary” landscape features that might indicate a hidden burial site. The “virtual exploration” covered nearly 4,000 square miles and asked volunteers to tag known features and structures, as well as those they thought could reveal ancient finds.

Within six months, over 10,000 armchair explorers spent a total of 30,000 hours searching the landscape, ultimately tagging over 2.3 million sites. From there, researchers narrowed the list down to 100 accessible locations, and a field team verified 55 archeologically significant sites, including what are thought to be gravesites dating from the Bronze Age to the Mongol era.

Plans for excavating these sites are not yet made, but Lin’s use of crowdsourcing helps to verify the scientific value of the Internet masses. “These crowdsourcing activities help us dive into the unknown and extract the unexpected,” the study states. “However, beyond that they present a fundamentally new construct for how we, as a digitally connected society, interact with information.”
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Clark, Laura. 2015. “Amateur Explorers Are Using High-Res Satellite Images to Search for Genghis Khan's Tomb”. Smithsonian Magazine. Posted: January 6, 2015. Available online: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/using-crowdsourcing-find-genghis-khans-tomb-180953816/?no-ist