Paleo-anthropologists have recently analyzed the skeletons of two humans dating over 2,300 years ago from Ancient China which suggest that deliberate amputation of the limbs of one leg might have been done as a type of legal punishment. The skeletons came from the former Eastern Zhou Dynasty (771-256 BCE) near the modern city of Sanmenxia. One of the skeletons was missing a left foot and about a fifth of the lower left leg, and the other was missing the right foot and lower right leg. The bone cuts on both skeletons were evenly done, and they had been allowed to heal.
These skeletons were likely to have been upper class: they lay in coffins oriented north to south, which was typical for the aristocracy. Furthermore, bone analysis shows these humans had eaten a protein-rich diet, also suggesting their high status.
These findings provide physical corroboration for the type of legal systems that existed in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, which was marked by political chaos as well as philosophical and religious innovations. These were the centuries when Confucius taught, when Legalism (a system of harsh rules and punishments) developed, and when Daoism originated. It was the age of the Warring States (475-221 BCE), when dynastic warlords seized whatever territories they could in order to enhance their authority.
The analysis of these skeletons was published in _Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences_ in March of 2024.
Sources: “2,500-year-old skeletons with matching injuries reveal grisly punishments in China’s past,” Sciencealert.com, 21 May 2024, Clare Watson. Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, “Zhou Dynasty, ca. 1050-221 BCE”
