Monday, 29 February 2016

Cosmetic sticks at Xiaohe Cemetery in early Bronze Age Xinjiang, China

It is said that the average modern woman consumes more than 3 kilograms of lipstick in her lifetime.

Some might find all that wax, oils and emollients a bit hard to digest, but the prehistoric inhabitants of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region made their women's cosmetics sticks out of something a little more edible around 3,500 to 4,000 years ago.

According to the latest archaeological research published on Thursday night in Scientific Reports, an online, open access journal from the publishers of Nature, the red cosmetic sticks buried with women in Xiaohe Cemetery (1980-1450 BC) were made from cow hearts.

"In previous excavations, a number of bronze ware items and other inorganic relics were found. But these cosmetic tools, being made of organic matter, are very rare because they are much more difficult to preserve," said Yang Yimin, a professor from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences under the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an author of the newly published research.

The red cosmetic sticks, around 6.5 cm in length and 0.9 cm in diameter, were found in leather bags buried alongside the mummified corpses of several females. Scientists inferred from the find that the sticks were not only used to paint faces, but also to color relics that have been excavated from Xiaohe Cemetery.

Samples taken from the cosmetic sticks were submitted to a synchrotron radiation micro-computed tomography test－a type of X-ray technology－that found they were made from cow hearts covered in pigment by analyzing their interior structure and constituent proteins.

"The color red usually serves as a symbol for the worship of blood, and the heart is one of the most important organs in cattle, as the center of blood circulation. This indicates the cosmetic sticks were used to paint human faces red and were significant, possibly sacred, objects used as part of the Xiaohe people's religious behavior," Yang said.

Xiaohe Cemetery is a Bronze Age site that features more than 160 tombs located in the east of Xinjiang's Tarim Basin. It was first discovered in the 1930s by a team of Swedish archaeologists, but was not excavated until 2002.

"In recent years, a number of significant discoveries have been made in Xiaohe Cemetery, which will open a new window on our understanding of this region's inhabitants, their prehistoric lives and early communication with both Eastern and Western cultures," said Li Wenying, a researcher of Xinjiang Institute of Relics and Archaeology in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang.

Earlier research found that the Xiaohe people had blond or flaxen hair and eyelashes, which indicates that gene mixing between East and West started at least 4,000 years ago.

The newly reported cosmetic sticks are one of the clues that point to women playing a central religious role and enjoying a high social status

研究发现古人3500年前用牛心做化妆棒(双语)

Thousands of years before the glitz and glamour of modern fashion, ancient residents in today’s Xinjiang were already taking cosmetics to heart.

在现代时尚的辉煌和魅力还没有出现的数千年前，今天新疆地区的古代居民们就已经开始使用化妆品了。

Chinese scientists have discovered two "cosmetic sticks" unearthed from Xiaohe Cemetery in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region that were made from the hearts of cattle, the first time such organs have been found to serve as cosmetic tools.

位于中国西北部新疆维吾尔自治区的小河墓地出土了两个“化妆棒”，中国科学家们分析发现原材是牛心。这是人类首次了解到将牛心作为化妆品原料。

Dating back about 3,600 years ago, the irregularly-shaped red "sticks" were found in leather bags laid beside female mummies. according to an article published in the journal Scientific Reports.

据发表在《科学报告》期刊上的文章，这些不规则形状的“化妆棒”要追溯到3600年前，它们是在女性干尸旁边的一个皮质小包里发现的。

A team led by Yang Yimin with the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences employed proteomics analysis and found the objects’ proteins were derived from bovine hearts. Using SR micro CT and Raman spectrum, they found a layer of hematite powders, which served as red pigment, on the dehydrated hearts.

"The red paint found on faces of the female mummies leads us to presume the tools were, first of all, used in make-up," Yang told Xinhua on Thursday, while not ruling out the possibility of the hearts being used to paint other objects.

Heart muscles contain fat and collagen, which can serve as a natural adhesives to attach the pigments to paint. Yang also believed the use of cattle heart might carry religious connotations.

心肌中脂肪和胶原蛋白的含量，让它成为了绘制时粘连颜料的天然粘合剂。杨益民还认为，人们使用牛心化妆棒可能带有宗教内涵。

Red paints were commonly found inside Xiaohe tombs, from red lines on the mummies’ foreheads to painting on the huge pillars worshipping fertility in front of each coffin. That the sticks were mostly buried beside female mummies implied that women played a special role in the religious ritual of painting in red, researchers said.

The study has provided clues to understanding the role of cattle in the Xiaohe Culture, which existed about 4,000 years ago, and the history of early cosmetics, according to Yang.

杨益民表示，该研究对我们理解4000多年前的小河文化中“牛”的角色，以及早期化妆品的历史，提供了线索。

The Xiaohe Cemetery, located in the Taklamakan Desert, is best known for its many mummies in ship-shaped coffins. Archaeologists say the dry and hot environment helped preserve a large number of organic relics.

小河墓地位于塔克拉玛干沙漠，因其出土的许多在船形棺木中干尸而闻名。考古学家称，那里极其干旱炎热的条件对大量的有机遗迹的保存起了很大作用。

The site has seen a number of amazing discoveries, including a skull with a hole indicating brain surgery and China’s oldest adhesive made from cattle gelatine, found on a ritual staff and also identified by Yang’s team.

No comments:

Translate

Hans van Roon

About Me

My fascination for these subjects started in the '80 's by reading the book of Peter Hopkirk about the travels and explorations of Aurel Stein in Central Asia at the beginning of the 20th century.
Over the Silk Road through Central Asia, the Taklamakan Desert, Bokhara and Samarkand I arrived in the 13th century and followed the building of a world empire by Genghis Khan, his sons and grandsons.
His most famous grand son was Khubilai Khan and with him I ended in the Yuan Dynasty in the time when Marco Polo visited China and since than I never stopped reading again

Bibliotheca Sinica 2.0

Bibliotheca Sinica 2.0 explores Sino-Western encounters with a guide to digitized books on China published between 1477 and 1939

Yale Silk Road Database

The Yale Silk Road Database serves as a multi-disciplinary resource with relevance to students and faculty working in the fields of art and archaeology, religious studies, history, East Asian languages and literatures, Central Asian and Islamic studies.

International Dunhuang Project

IDP is a ground-breaking international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet