Heartbreaking remains of mum who died protecting her baby boy from an earthquake

CHINA: Archaeologists have discovered the skeletal remains of a mum who died trying to protect her child.

Anthropologists studying the Lajia archaeological site in Minhe County, in north-west China’s Qinghai Province, came across the mother and her son while unearthing a large-scale burial caused by a devastating earthquake some 4,000 years ago.

The well-preserved skeletal remains, belonging to people from China’s Qijia culture (which existed between 2,200 - 1,600 BC), show the larger bones of the kneeling mother shielding the smaller child, who archaeologists say was a boy.

The Qijia culture, first discovered in the 1920s, was an early Bronze Age culture that lived around the upper Yellow River region, spanning across China’s northern and north-western provinces including Gansu, Ningxia, Qinghai, and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

The study of the culture has been key in discovering the origin and early development of Chinese civilisation.

Researcher Park Pai said: "The dig can tell us a lot about people from the time but also on a personal level this is the story of a tragic death thousands of years ago."