About 3,000 years ago, a Chinese woman had her foot cut off. The amputation was conducted as punishment for committing a crime rather than for a medical condition. It is a rare example of yue, an ancient Chinese punishment.
In 2022, a study of her bones showed no signs of disease that would’ve made an amputation necessary.
The procedure also appeared to have been performed in a rough manner, the opposite of the precision that a medical amputation requires.
Other possible explanations for the amputation that researchers considered included an accident or a war injury.
But after closer examination of the bones, they concluded that punishment was the most fitting interpretation, according to Li Nan, the lead author of the study and an archaeologist at Peking University in China.
For over 1,000 years, the yue punishment was practiced in ancient China. It was finally abolished in the second century B.C.
At the time the woman was alive, there were 500 different offenses that could lead to having a foot amputated, such as cheating, stealing, rebelling, and even climbing over certain gates.
Unfortunately, there were no clues to tell the researchers what the woman had been punished for.
Yue was enforced since the second millennium B.C. by emperors of the Xia dynasty, which was the first dynasty of ancient China. It was one of five punishments that could be inflicted on people who broke the law.
chungking – stock.adobe.com – illustrative purposes only
Much historical evidence of the practice exists. One record from the first millennium B.C. even indicated that a Chinese official complained about needing to find special shoes for amputees.
Those who committed minor crimes received beatings, but more serious crimes resulted in one of the five severe punishments.
These included mo, where the face or forehead was tattooed with permanent ink; yi, where the offender’s nose was cut off; yue, the amputation of the feet; gōng, a brutal castration; and da pi, a death sentence that was carried out by beheading, being boiled alive, or being torn apart by horses.
According to traditional Chinese records, the Han dynasty’s Emperor Wen abolished the five punishments in the second century B.C.
He replaced them with a system of fines, hard labor, flogging, and exile. The worst criminals were executed.
The woman’s skeleton was found in 1999 in a tomb at the Zhouyan site in China’s northwestern province of Shaanxi.
The tomb dates back between 2,800 and 3,000 years ago. At that time, Zhouyan was the largest and most important city in the region.
An extensive analysis of the woman’s skeleton revealed that she was between 30 and 35-years-old when she died.
Aside from her missing foot, she had been in good health. She did not seem to have suffered from any illness after the amputation, suggesting that she was cared for.
Furthermore, the growth of her remaining leg bones showed that she lived for another five years before she died.
No funerary items except for a few shells were unearthed from her tomb, which meant that she might’ve lived in poverty and was likely buried by family members.
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