Ancient justice: Chinese skeletons reveal limb amputation as punishment over 2,000 years ago

Researchers discovered two skeletons with identical injuries, indicating that, more than 2,000 years ago, the Eastern Zhou Dynasty of China employed limb amputation as a form of punishment with startling precision.

Paleoanthropologist Qian Wang of Texas A&M University and associates examined a skeleton that was probably male and lacking its left foot as well as roughly one-fifth of its lower left leg, which was 8 centimetres (3 inches) shorter than its right leg.

The second skeleton, thought to be male, likewise had its right leg severed at the same length of bone, but not roughly. The men's dismembered limbs are of identical length, cut within a centimetre of each other.

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The skeletons were discovered during an excavation in Sanmenxia, a city in Henan Province, China. Their age, estimated at 2,300 to 2,500 years, places them in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, whose rulers governed portions of China from 771 and 256 BCE.

Wang and colleagues write in their report released in March that "this discovery, along with some previous findings, corroborates with historic written records of law and punishment" employed during the Eastern Zhou Dynasty.

It is hard to determine what these two guys were accused of based just on their bones. However, Wang speculates that one man may have had a more severe sentence than the other based on historical records because right leg amputations were only performed for more serious crimes.

"Since amputation by penalty was not an uncommon phenomenon, they might [have] returned to normal social life and were buried in a proper manner after death," Wang explains. Based on the findings that the researchers published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, it is likely that the men's social rank was high enough to allow for their rehabilitation.

The two-layered casket in which each body was discovered was buried facing north-south, an orientation usually associated with the elite classes. Conversely, commoners were restricted to smaller, east-west facing graves.

Grave items, as well as isotopes in the bones indicating a protein-rich diet, imply the men were aristocrats, maybe low-level officials. Regarding the two Chinese men who paid for their unidentified crimes with their limbs, Wang says, "These cases enrich our understanding of the penal laws and their implementations, medical care capabilities, and the general benevolent attitudes towards those who were punished by law from the social and archaeological contexts of ancient China."

(With inputs from agencies)