Reconstruction of the face of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty

[davidb]

Came across this:

https://www.newsweek.com/face-chinese-emperor-1500-years-ago-revealed-1884053

[CarlL]

Blink and you miss the Newsweek piece on the tomb discovery linked to Emperor Wu.

His facial reconstruction is very striking. A long looking face and piercing eyes. The eyes seemed to have a quality that's almost 'stereo-type' but perhaps this also reflects my nil knowledge of his ethnicity and their appearance, which the text summarises as:

"The Northern Zhou dynasty was ruled by people of the Xianbei ethnic group—an ancient nomadic people that lived in what is today Mongolia and northern/northeastern China." Xianbei?

The Newsweek piece notes: "The genetic material indicates that the emperor had brown eyes, black hair and skin that was dark to intermediate in color. The results also suggest his facial features were similar to that of people living in northern or eastern Asia today."

I suppose any limited knowledge I have of Chinese history and culture is also hindered by the 'European-isation' of Chinese words in the century 1880-1980, which perhaps hinders identifying ethnic groups. But the Chinese State post Mao has also done something similar with its imposition of Mandarin where previously there were (and may still be) many dialects / languages and was it 26 alphabets before the creation of the simplified (?Mandarin) alphabet (script) in years after Mao took power.

I wondered if the "Xianbei ethnic group—an ancient nomadic people that lived in what is today Mongolia and northern/northeastern China" could be cousins of the Manchu / Qing dynasty that ended c1911AD after some three hundred years.

Fascinating if brief look into northern Chinese dynasty c7th century AD (in the European calendar that is!).

CarlL

[Andreas Johansson]

There's an old idea that the Xianbei spoke a Tungusic language*, which would indeed make them linguistic cousins of the Manchu.

The current consensus seems to be that their language was related to Mongol, however.

On the third hand, the various peoples of Mongolia, Manuchuria, and SE Siberia have interacted and intermarried so much over the millennia that they may count as "cousins" irrespective of language. But the Xianbei were proper steppe nomads (before settling in China), unlike the more sedentary Manchu.


* I've got a popular history of China that simply calls them "Tungus". This is rather like calling Henry V's men "Germans" on the grounds they spoke a Germanic language.