In 1999, a female corpse was unearthed in Heilongjiang, China, with black objects in its feet. Experts revealed her tragic experience: Was she buried alive?
Meng’s mummy
For over 200 years, the skin, muscles, and joints of a woman’s body remained intact. This female body lay in the coffin, her posture severely distorted and her mouth wide open. Although she has become a mummy, it’s not difficult to see that her expression is one of great pain.
The mummy was about 164 cm tall, the whole body was as black as coal, the placenta was not removed from the mummy before death.
The placenta was attached to the buttocks.
Looking more closely, the left hand and foot are mutilated.
Judging by the mummy’s face and bones, the archaeological team indicated that it was a young woman of about 25 years old.
According to Chinese tradition, a person who dies has his or her limbs cleansed and straightened before being buried.
The mystery of the cause of death: did she die of chronic poisoning or a difficult birth?
“At the time the female mummy was found, her skin was still yellowish, her hair and eyebrows were still clearly visible, and even the spots on her face were noticeable,” Xin Jian recalls.
In the mummy’s open mouth, antiquities experts found only one tooth, but it is not unusual for a woman aged 25 to 30 to have only one tooth left.
After examining the mummy, Dr. Liu, an anatomist at Qiqihar Medical School, concluded that the single remaining tooth was likely due to chronic poisoning from ingesting large quantities of tonics and herbal products; the poisoning caused the teeth to fall out. Regarding the placenta, Dr. Liu deduced that it was likely caused by Meng’s “narrow angle of the pelvic inlet.” She had a difficult delivery, and after hours of painful struggle, the baby was finally born. The child’s fragility, coupled with the difficult labor, led to fainting and death from physical exhaustion.
Due to the limited medical care available at the time, Meng’s family may have mistaken the fainting spell for actual death and prepared her postpartum to the point of causing the woman’s permanent and actual death.
The underlying part is not secure.
After the burial, the woman slowly wakes up and finds herself in a coffin.
She’s so short she can’t sit down or open the lid.
Then she starts screaming for help, and during her fierce struggle her fingers and toes are broken and scratched, and the placenta that was inside her womb also comes out.
She writhes, screams desperately, but the coffin hides her screams, no one can hear her.
Inside the coffin hangs a ring of fabric. All of this fabric rips when she tears it open. She tires from screaming desperately and eventually dies of pain and suffocation.
