Lavish, 800-year-old tombs in China may hold remains of Great Jin dynasty elites

Three centuries-old brick tombs discovered in northeastern China may hold the remains of a non-Chinese people that ruled the region nearly a millennium ago.

The tombs, located in the city of Changzhi in Shanxi province, are from the Jurchen Jin — or "Great Jin" — dynasty, which ruled in northern China between 1115 and 1234.

But the Jurchen Jin rulers were not ethically Han, the dominant ethnicity in China today. Instead, they were a seminomadic people from the northeast of China, Julia Schneider, a professor of Chinese History at University College Cork in Ireland who was not involved in the discovery, told Live Science in an email.

According to a report of the discovery in China Daily — the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party — the three tombs were found in November 2023 during salvage operations in a northeastern district of the city. At some point, the tombs had been damaged by looting, but all three were relatively well preserved and included painted murals, decorations, inscriptions and epitaphs, the report said.

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Two of the tombs are adorned with arches, doors, windows, figurines and floral patterns, as well as inscriptions with detailed information about people, events, history and geography at the time they were made.

The third tomb, however, is painted in a very different style. "Its chamber walls also imitate wooden structures, but the painted flora, fauna and colors are markedly different from the other two, leaving archaeologists room for further interpretation," the report said.