Ancient Cliff Burials in Buquan

Ancient Cliff Burials in Buquan

Ancient Cliff Burials in Buquan

In the long river of human history, ancient China once had a mysterious custom of cliff burials. This practice was prevalent among certain groups of ethnicities such as the Pu, Yue, Ba, Liao, and Han peoples. Influenced by this, the Long’an County also saw instances of cliff cave burials, which mysteriously disappeared after the Yuan Dynasty. Due to the lack of written records, the origins, processes, and outcomes of these cliff cave burials remain a mystery to us modern people. These ancient relics from distant times only add to their enigmatic and mystical aura.

The earliest discovery of cliff burials in Long’an County dates back to 1917, located about 100 meters south of Buweng Village in Longmin Village, Dujie Township, on the mountainside halfway up Balin. The cave entrance is approximately 40 meters above the ground, facing northeast.

What is a cliff burial? A cliff burial is a funeral custom where human remains are placed in cliff caves or on cliff faces, and it is also a form of aerial burial (i.e., open-air burial). It was an ancient burial method popular in the southwestern minority regions of China, including both hanging coffin burials and cliff cave burials. The cliff burials discovered in our county belong to the cliff cave type. This method involves placing the deceased at the entrance of natural caves on steep cliffs. From below the cliffs, when looking up, one can usually see the wooden coffins containing the bodies. For these coffin-placement caves, some slight modifications are sometimes made—mainly leveling or filling the cave floor, or adding wooden beams—to better accommodate the wooden coffins.

In 1958, three young men from Buquan Street—Zheng Yinian and two others—climbed up the Nawang Cliff Cave in search of nitrate soil (fertilizer). The cave was about 10 meters deep and roughly four meters wide. They unexpectedly found 18 wooden coffins placed inside the cave, with cypress wood used as padding underneath the coffins arranged in a V-shape on both sides, with the V’s opening facing inward toward the cave and the base facing outward. Among them, there was one relatively large coffin containing a double burial, while the others held single burials, with the coffins gradually decreasing in size. Due to locals reporting the find to higher authorities, by the end of 1962, Huang Zengqing from the regional museum came to conduct an on-site investigation. He found that all the coffins and human bones had been pushed out of the cave and piled at the foot of the mountain. The coffins were made by splitting a whole log lengthwise, hollowing out the middle, leaving interlocking edges, and then joining the halves together. The craftsmanship was quite refined, with seams so tight they were almost invisible. Some coffins had front edges that protruded 13–14 cm, slightly curved like the handles of ox horns, with the coffin body’s handle facing upward and the lid’s handle downward. According to Zheng Yinian, most of the 18 coffins contained only one set of skeletal remains, except for one larger coffin that held remains of two individuals along with six Tang Dynasty “Qianyuan Tongbao” coins, a round piece of pine resin 5 cm in diameter and 2 cm thick, and several porcelain bowls placed outside the coffin. Other coffins had no grave goods. The size of the coffins was determined by the height of the skeletal remains, typically measuring 67 cm in length, 34 cm in width, and 18 cm in height, with the smallest being about the size of a pillow.

Coffins in other cliff cave burials were largely similar, with grave goods typically including “Qianyuan Tongbao” and “Kaiyuan Tongbao” copper coins (the earliest dating back to the Sui and Tang periods), porcelain bowls, wooden bowls, iron chopping knives, daggers, spears, and shells. Apart from these, there were no other drawings or written records.

The reason why the ancient Zhuang people went to such great lengths—expending significant manpower, material resources, and wealth—to place coffins in cliff caves high on precipices was determined by their economic life and religious beliefs. Archaeological evidence shows that in ancient times, due to low productivity, the ancestors of the Zhuang people mostly lived in caves. In their worldview, the dead continued to live and work just like the living, requiring food, clothing, shelter, and transportation. Guided by this belief, cliff burials became associated with the caves in which humans dwelled.

Cliff cave burials in Guangxi have a long history, with the earliest ones dating back to the late primitive society. For example, the cliff cave burial in Bawang Village, Yingjun Village, Liangjiang Town, Wuming, contained human remains from eight individuals, along with funerary objects such as pottery, stone tools, and jade artifacts—no bronze ware was found. Carbon-14 dating of the human bone samples dates them to 3650±95 years ago at the earliest. The cliff cave burial in Nongshan, Dengji Village, Xianhu Town, Wuming, unearthed a collection of pottery, stone tools, jade artifacts, and clamshell tools from the late Neolithic period.

Later, through the Southern and Northern Dynasties, Sui, Tang, Song, Ming, and all the way to the late Qing Dynasty, cliff cave burials were practiced in Guangxi. The tradition spanned various historical periods. The ethnic groups in Guangxi who practiced cliff cave burials were the native inhabitants of the region, starting with the Yue peoples, including the Xi’ou and Luoyue. Later came the Wuhu people, Xiyuan Man, and Guangyuan Man from the Left and Right River basins—all ancestors of the Zhuang people. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, they were the Zhuang people from areas such as Donglan, Pingguo, and Long’an, with Yao people also practicing the custom in later periods.

The cliff cave burials of Long’an have a long and mysterious history yet to be fully uncovered. Based on the bronze coins found among the grave goods, the cliff burials likely occurred between the Sui-Tang period and the Yuan Dynasty. Later, the custom of cliff cave burials mysteriously vanished. Due to the lack of written records, we can only speculate as above. Coupled with the passage of time, it’s possible that the ethnic groups who practiced cliff burials gradually left their original settlements, with some even disappearing from the stage of history. As a result, these millennia-old relics still await the uncovering of their mysteries.