Sacred beasts of ancient Yinxu

Carbon-14 dating places the bones between 1220 and 1000 BC, spanning roughly from the reign of King Wuding, about the 12th century BC, to the end of the Shang Dynasty, says Niu Shishan, the lead archaeologist at the Yinxu Ruins. Wuding's rule marked one of the dynasty's most prosperous eras; nearly half of the inscribed oracle bones recovered at Yinxu date to his time.

Li Zhipeng says oracle inscriptions record frequent ancestral worship ceremonies. Many of the newly excavated pits belong to Wuding's period, suggesting the animals were possibly used by the king in royal sacrifices before burial.

He says the scale is striking. Within the mausoleum area alone, nearly 3,000 tombs and sacrificial pits have been identified. If 59 pits yielded so many managed wild animals, researchers believe many more once existed.

"Oracle bones tell us that sacrificial ceremonies were very common during the late Shang period," says Li Zhipeng. "If wild animals were rare, they would not have used so many. The court had to balance sustaining them with ritual use."

"So many wild animals appear together, and are all processed in a standardized manner. This indicates that the Shang people had already developed a sophisticated system for acquiring, rearing, and managing wild fauna," says Niu.

Li Zhipeng says multidisciplinary research is still underway to gain more in-depth information on how the Shang people obtained, raised, and managed such wild animals.

The latest animal discovery is part of researchers' continuous studies on the northern bank of the Huanhe River since 2021.