Log cabinet culture in Thailand/@sshoodude
Dozens of caves are scattered in the highlands of northwest Thailand, which will turn out to have a number of very intriguing human graves from the distant past.
Inside there are very large coffins made of wood - usually several meters long that are made from a single tree trunk - and they stand above the floor on wooden stilts.
So are giants several meters long buried there?
A new study sheds light on the mystery.
It turns out that about 40 of these burial sites are a trace of a mysterious culture that lived in the Iron Age and inhabited the Mae Hong Son province in northern Thailand 2,300 to 1,000 years ago.
In the new study, published in the journal Nature Communications, archaeologists genetically profiled 33 ancient people buried at five of these sites—and traced their roots.
The study illuminated the complex genetic landscape of post-Stone Age Southeast Asia.
Previous studies based on single individuals or single sites indicated that this culture was associated with farmers from the Yangtze River Valley in southern China and the local Hubinian hunter-gatherer societies.
This latest research from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology provides deep insight by examining dozens of human remains from many sites.
Their analysis suggests that the agricultural side of their genome can actually be divided into two groups: one connected to the Yangtze River Valley and another to the Yellow River Valley in China.
"Our results contribute to the emerging picture of a complex genetic landscape in the post-Neolithic continent of Southeast Asia. This study provides successful genetic results from limestone cave samples from the highlands of northwestern Thailand," said study author and biologist Vibhu Kottanen from Naresuan University in Thailand in a statement, " Future studies of samples recovered from lowland open-air archaeological sites look promising. If possible, they could provide further insight into the genetic history of mainland Southeast Asia."
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Over 40 caves in Mae Hong Son province contain huge wooden coffins on stilts/© Selina Carlhoff
So who was buried there and why did they bury him in a huge coffin?
Culturally, it is difficult to know the exact meaning of the extremely long coffins of ancient Thailand.
Why did an Iron Age culture go to such great lengths to raise the long coffins on stilts?
Was it a practical matter or did it have some spiritual value?
The new study does not delve too deeply into these questions.
He simply notes: "The coffins were cut from a single tree and include distinct carvings at the ends of the head and foot, which may reflect social beliefs, the status of the deceased, the skill of the coffin maker, or indicate family or clan cemeteries."
However, it is evident that other ancient cultures from Southeast Asia have a similar tradition.
Over 170 boat-shaped coffins have been found in 44 different archaeological sites in nearby Vietnam, which are widely attributed to the Dong Son culture that lived in the area from 1000 BC to the first century AD.
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The long coffins are made from a single tree trunk/© Selina Carlhoff
The cultural remains from Vietnam are usually placed in the same coffin - like the "boat burial of Europe" where the deceased, usually of high social status or warriors, are laid to rest in the hull of the ship as if sending the dead on a journey to the afterlife.
As the new research has shown, there was a huge amount of migration and assimilation in Southeast Asia over 2,000 years ago.
Given this information, it is not surprising that not only genetic information was transmitted, but also cultural tradition.
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