Live Science
By Tom Metcalfe
March 19, 2024
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.