Study reveal how people lived and died over thousands of years.Tombs scattered across China, constructed from the ancient Xia Dynasty (around 4,000 years ago) to modern times, reveal how political and social changes shaped the nation’s history.
This finding comes from a study published on October 29, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS One by Quanbao Ma of the Beijing University of Civil Engineering and Architecture, China, and his research team.
To uncover historical patterns, the researchers mapped the locations of ancient tombs across the country. Their analysis showed that both economic conditions and geographic factors likely played key roles in determining where these burial sites were built.
The team found that many well-preserved tombs date to eras of stability and prosperity, including the Qin-Han and Yuan-Ming-Qing dynasties. In contrast, periods marked by warfare and unrest, such as the Five Dynasties era, left behind fewer tombs.
The researchers suggest that during times of greater wealth and security, people had more resources and opportunity to devote attention to burial practices and beliefs about the afterlife.
Population trends might also have influenced where tombs were built. The researchers note, for example, that war was common in northern China from the late Eastern Han dynasty through the Northern and Southern dynasties. This led people to move southward, and tombs from this era are clustered in these southern locations.
