The woman restoring ancient Chinese makeup

From Global Times:

By examining references in ancient books, Wang Yifan, a 29-year-old woman from Northeast China's Liaoning Province, has recovered 39 types of cosmetics and makeup tools from China's different dynasties including a powder used by Wu Zetian, China's only female emperor, during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) and bath beans, a type of facial cleanser used by the Empress Dowager Cixi in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Currently, Wang's recovered cosmetics cannot be sold, they are just for display as they still need further refinement.

read more here @ Global Times

Lady of Dai

One of the world’s most preserved mummies, the Lady of Dai, is still soft to the touch, has bendy ligaments, and is 2,100 years old

A Chinese woman was preserved for around 2,100 years and is baffling scientists. She is called the Lady of Dai, and is considered to be one of the best-preserved mummies ever found.

Her skin is still soft, her legs and arms can bend, her internal organs are still intact. She has even retained her Type-A blood. Somehow she still has her own eyelashes and hair.

The Lady of Dai is also known as Xin Zhui. She lived during the Han dynasty from 206 BC through 220 AD and was the wife of the Marquis of Dai.

Her tomb was found inside a hill known as Mawangdui, located in Changsha, Hunan, China. The burial site was found in 1971 when workers were digging an air raid shelter.

Read More Here @ the Vintage News

Ancient Bling In Tomb of Chinese Woman

Ancient Bling: Exquisite Jewelry Found in Tomb of Chinese Woman

Around 1,500 years ago, at a time when China was divided, a woman named Farong was laid to rest wearing fantastic jewelry, which included a necklace of 5,000 beads and "exquisite" earrings, archaeologists report.

Her tomb was discovered in 2011 in Datong City, China, by a team of archaeologists with the Datong Municipal Institute of Archaeology who were surveying the area before a construction project. The researchers excavated the tomb, conserved the artifacts and reconstructed the necklace.

Her epitaph, found by the tomb entrance, reads simply, "Han Farong, the wife of Magistrate Cui Zhen" (as translated in the journal article). In China, the surname is traditionally written first and the given name second.

While no other burials were found in Farong's tomb, the archaeologists did discover two other tombs nearby that are in the process of being studied.

Read more at Yahoo! News

The Four Great Beauties, and the Arts of the Courtesans in Ancient China

The Four Great Beauties, and the Arts of the Courtesans in Ancient China | Ancient Origins

The Four Great Beauties are four ancient Chinese women renowned for their beauty which they skillfully exercised to influence Chinese history. Although each of the Four Great Beauties frequently appear as the subjects or objects of arts, one seldom learns much of them beyond their names, descriptions of their looks and brief mentions of their skills. This is common in ancient Chinese works related to female performers, or courtesans. In their legends, the Four Great Beauties were, in fact, heavily implied as courtesans themselves. Their legends illustrate applications of the early Chinese education utilized and perfected by the ancient courtesans of China, which was then preserved by Confucius as part of his philosophy.

Fu hao - Ancient queen, priestess and leader of warriors

Ancient queen, priestessand leader of warriors | Shanghai Daily

THE story of the woman warrior Hua Mulan has been passed down in history through ballad, film and drama for 1,600 years. Much of the tale’s popularity comes from the rarity of a heroine in a time when women were largely relegated to domesticity.

No artifacts have actually been discovered yet to prove the existence of Mulan, but an exhibition at Capital Museum is capturing attention with revelations of an even earlier female warrior named Fu Hao.

She lived more than 3,000 years ago. Her life is being pieced together through oracle bones, bronze and jade weapons, jewelry and vessels found at an excavation of her tomb in what is now Henan Province in central China.

The museum tribute to her is entitled “Queen, Mother, General — the 40th Anniversary of the Excavation of the Shang Tomb of Fu Hao.” The exhibition at Capital Museum in Beijing runs until June 26.

Female Sacrafice at the Shimao Ruins

From Raw Story:

Archaeologists in China have unearthed the skulls of more than 80 young women who may have been sacrificed more than 4,000 years ago, state media reported Monday.

The skulls were found in what appears to have been a mass grave at the Shimao Ruins, the site of a neolithic stone city in the northern province of Shaanxi.

The women’s bodies were not present, the official news agency Xinhua said, adding that archaeologists concluded that the skulls were “likely to be related to the construction of the city wall” in “ancient religious activities or foundation ceremonies” before construction began.

In 2005 archaeologists at Hongjiang in the central province of Hunan found an altar devoted to human sacrifice as well as the skeleton of one victim.

A separate altar was used for sacrificing animals at the 7,000-year-old site, which is believed to be the earliest human sacrificial site ever found in the country.

From Channel NewsAsia:

The discovery is not the first instance of researchers unearthing remains related to human sacrifice in early China. Kings and emperors were regularly buried along with their servants and concubines, who were sometimes killed first -- and on other occasions buried alive.

The Shimao Ruins cover more than four square kilometres and were discovered in 1976.

Archaeologists have also found more than 100 remains of murals as well as large amounts of jade ware at the site of the ancient city, which sits in the Yellow River basin and is believed to date back to 2000 BC.

From Business Standard:

These skulls are likely related to the building of the city wall, suggesting that ancient religious activities or foundation ceremonies were organised before construction of the neolithic city began, state-run Xinhua news agency said. 

Built about 4,300 years ago, the city was abandoned about 300 years later during the Xia Dynasty, the first dynasty in China to be described in ancient historical chronicles.

From Mail Online:

The skulls were found in what appears to have been a mass grave at the Shimao Ruins, the site of a neolithic stone city in the northern province of Shaanxi, China.

The women's bodies were not present, suggesting they were victims of human sacrifice and experts believe they could even be related to the founding ceremony of the ancient city, according to state media.

From Hurriyet Daily News:

The discovery is not the first instance of researchers unearthing remains related to human sacrifice in early China. Kings and emperors were regularly buried along with their servants and concubines, who were sometimes killed first and on other occasions buried alive. The total includes 40 skulls that the Shaanxi provincial government said earlier had been discovered at the site last year.

Black Death Came From China

From Global Times:

Teams of medical geneticists and biologists have determined that the great waves of plague that have ravaged Europe, dating back to medieval times, originated in China, according to a New York Times report.

The plagues have claimed millions of lives, and the worst wiped out an estimated 30 percent of the European population.

"The results indicate that the plague appeared in China more than 2,600 years ago," said a statement from the French Museum of Natural History that took part in the research.

It then spread toward Western Europe along the Silk Road, starting more than 600 years ago, and then to Africa, probably by an expedition led by Chinese seafarer Zheng He in the 15th century, the statement added.

The plague came to the US from China via Hawaii in the late 19th century, according to the molecular evidence.

Ancient Women

Two interesting articles on ancient women.

Frank Chadwick @ Great History - Ancient Persia's Remarkable Women

But it is worth remembering that over two thousand years ago Persian women enjoyed rights that American women fought to gain as recently as the last century.

And following on from the discovery in China of an ancient man with "celtic" features, comes the Loulan Beauty. Malcolm J @ Heritage Key writes:

An even older Tarim mummy than Cherchen Man is the 4,000-year-old Loulan Beauty – discovered near the town of Loulan – who too has long, flowing fair hair, and features that look to be of Nordic origin. All of these European migrants seem to have been peaceful folk, since very few weapons have been found in their graves, or valuable goods that suggest evidence of a caste system.

China's Terra Cotta Army - New Theory

From the Telegraph:

China's famed ancient terracotta army which surrounds the tomb of the nation's first emperor actually belonged to a female ancestor, a historian has said.

The army of life-sized figures discovered near the northern city of Xi'an was previously thought to be guarding the burial site of Qin Shihuang, who presided over the unification of China in 221 BC and declared himself the first emperor.

But historian Chen Jingyuan told the state-owned Global Times newspaper he believes the emperor's ancestor Empress Xuan, who died 55 years before Qin's birth, was the real mastermind behind the army.

Chen presents his evidence in his new book "The Truth of Terracotta Warriors," which details discrepancies such as the army's distance from Qin's tomb and the hairstyles and clothes of the warriors which he says indicate they belonged to the empress.