The genetic test of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty Yuwen Yong was announced: talk about Xianbei's blood and language

Recently, Fudan University and the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology restored the appearance of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, Yuwen Yong, and also announced the latest genetic testing results. aroused public interest in Yu Wenyong.

"How can anyone read the Book of Shang without wearing a helmet?" - this is a popular meme among history buffs, in fact, it originates from the story of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, Yuwen Yong, who killed the powerful minister Yuwen Hu.

Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty Yuwen Yong

Yuwen Hu was the founding hero of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and it was he who abolished the Western Wei clan and made his cousin Yuwen Jue the founding emperor. After that, he set up his cousin to monopolize the government, and killed a group of opposition opponents such as Zhao Gui and Duguxin. Yuwenjue was very unhappy because of this, and quietly wooed the power of the court, wanting to get rid of Yuwenhu, but he was abolished and killed because of the plan to leak secrets, and he didn't even have enough of a year of emperor addiction. Next, Yuwen Hu chose his cousin Yuwen Yu to succeed him, but found that the latter was also disobedient and plotted to seize power, so he poisoned him three years later and chose the concubine born to Yuwentai's concubine, which is the protagonist of today's story, Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty, Yuwen Yong.

Although Yuwen Yong also held back and wanted to kill Yuwen Hu, on the one hand, he was born from a low background and had weak strength, and on the other hand, his two brothers had died, forcing him to endure for 12 years. During this time, he stabilized Yubungo while quietly contacting the opposition and waiting for the best time. Finally one day, Yu Wenyong figured it out: the first step in the conspiracy is to leak secrets, and the more opposition parties contacted, the faster the leaks will be made, and the two brothers are a lesson from the past. Therefore, the conspiracy is useless at all, and he has to take matters into his own hands to have a chance to deal with his cousin. So he said to Yuwen Hu: "Brother, my mother has been drinking too much recently, and it is not easy to persuade her. Da Zhou, you are the best, if you come to persuade her, she will definitely listen. This is the famous article "Wine Message" in "Shangshu", can you read it to the old lady in a while?" Yuwen Hu felt that his cousin valued him so much, and he was also very happy, so he went into the palace to find the old lady to study. Yu Wenyong was also wearing a ceremonial dress in a matter-of-fact manner, holding a jade wat and following him, looking very polite and obedient.

Then when Yuwen read the ancient text aloud with affection and persuaded the old lady to drink less. Yu Wenyong suddenly lifted the jade wat board and smashed the back of his cousin's head like a brick, successfully smashing the most powerful minister in the Northern Zhou Dynasty - this is the tragic end of Nian Shangshu not wearing a helmet...... So in 572 AD, the 30-year-old Yu Wenyong finally succeeded in pro-government after 12 years as a monarch. Soon after he came to power, he launched the construction of virtue and the destruction of the Buddha, in order to enrich the country and strengthen the army, and was one of the famous "three martial arts to destroy the Buddha". After that, he eliminated the Northern Qi and unified the north, laying the foundation for the Sui to destroy Chen 12 years later, but died violently at the age of 36.

As for the diseases he suffered, historical records say that "his mouth is unable to speak, his eyelids are lowered and he does not look again, his feet are shortened, and he is not allowed to walk", "his body is steamed inside, and his body sores are outward", "he is born of leprosy and dies of a malignant disease"...... There were many internal and external enemies in the Northern Zhou Dynasty at that time, and Yu Wenyong died of a violent illness in the prime of life, so there were many historians in ancient times, suspecting that he was poisoned by someone and did not die of natural causes. And the true cause of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty was finally understood until recently.

Using molecular anthropology to study Yuwen Yong

In 1993, an ancient tomb in Xianyang was discovered by criminals and blasted and excavated, and archaeologists had to carry out rescue excavations to confirm that it was the filial piety tomb of Emperor Wu and Empress Wude of the Northern Zhou Dynasty. In 2022, Fudan University tested the bones of Emperor Zhou Wu and found that the arsenic in them was more than 100 times that of normal people. On March 28, 2024, Fudan University and the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology restored Yuwenyong's appearance before his death, and also announced the latest genetic test results: Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty had a high genetic susceptibility to certain diseases (such as stroke), and his symptoms such as aphasia and lameness before his death are likely to be manifestations of stroke.

Among these test results, the most interesting to the author is the autosomal and Y chromosome analysis, that is, the origin and paternal origin of Yu Wenyong. According to Fudan research, Yuwenyong's genome is closest to that of the Khitan Tomb, the Heishui Tomb, and the modern Daur and Mongols. Its lineage is roughly a mixture of three sources: 60% of the population from Northeast Asia in the ancient Heilongjiang River Basin, one-third from the agricultural population in the ancient Yellow River Basin, and the rest from the nomadic population of the western steppes – which is almost a perfect match with the historical data.

According to the ancient Chinese texts, the Yuwen Department "came out of Liaodong Saiwai, and its first southern single was also far away", "migrated south from Yinshan and lived in western Liaoning". That is to say, the Yuwen Department originally belonged to the Southern Xiongnu, and later moved to Liaodong and was assimilated by Xianbei. And Yu Wenyong's father, Yu Wentai, is a mixed race of Xianbei and Han Chinese. His mother's name is Qi Nu, and she doesn't even have a Chinese name, so she is most likely a pure-blooded Xianbei person. It is estimated that Yuwenyong's Han blood is about 1/4, and Xianbei blood is about 3/4 - the results of genetic testing are roughly close to this, but the proportion of Han blood is even higher, and it is speculated that not only his grandmother is Han, but his great-grandmother should also have Han blood, and in addition to the Northeast Asian component corresponding to Xianbei, there are also many western grassland components, which confirms the record that Yuwenbu was originally a Xiongnu. The history books also say that the Khitan people are the descendants of the Xianbei Yuwen Department, and the sequencing results of Yuwen Yong are indeed the closest to the Khitan tombs.

Yuwenyong's Y chromosome is also very interesting, it is C-F1756, which belongs to the famous C North Branch, which is consistent with the type of Yuanwei Tomb measured before Fudan. Yuan Wei was born in Tuoba Xianbei and is not in the same family as Yuwen Xianbei, which indicates that C-F1756 is likely to be common among the entire Xianbei people. And Yuanwei's autosomal test shows that there is no difference between it and the Han people - historical records record that the Tuoba clan is keen on sinicization, and both men and women must intermarry with the Han people, which seems to be true.

Avar and Rouran

Interestingly, C-F1756 is not only common in Xianbei and Khitan tombs, but also in European tombs of the same period: at least two cases of C-F1756 have been detected in the tombs of the Avar Khanate. Autosomal analysis shows that the Avars are almost identical to those of the Xianbei people of the same period. This also unveils a puzzle that has plagued the historiography for thousands of years - where did the Avars come from?!

Around 557 AD, a nomadic tribe suddenly invaded the heart of Europe, and their fighting style was very similar to that of the Huns who had preceded them. The frightened Europeans thought that the historical Huns had returned. This nomadic people were the Avars, who introduced stirrups to Europe and drove the Slavs to the Balkans (this is where the South Slavs came from). The Avars had no precarious roots in Europe when they first arrived, and they had served as barbarian mercenaries in Eastern Rome. And the Turkic envoys, after seeing the Avars in Byzantium, angrily demanded that the Eastern Romans stop taking in asylum and hand over all the Avars, because they were their Turkic enemies and slaves!

What kind of people can make the Turks so hateful? There seems to be no second one except Rouran: Rouran is the least sinicized branch in Xianbei, has always lived in the steppe and has not moved south, and is very cruel to its subjects. They also often raided the Xianbei tribe in the south, and were contemptuously called "worms" by Tuoba Xianbei and Yuwen Xianbei. The Turks once became Rouran's blacksmithing slaves, were bullied, and were contemptuously called "forging slaves" by Rouran. It was not until 555 AD that the Turks defeated the Rouran Khanate, which in turn turned Rouran into their own slaves.

After modern European scholars came into contact with these ancient Chinese texts, they proposed that Avar was Rouran. Some linguists speculate that Avar avar = awan = the ancient pronunciation of Wuhuan - that's right, it is the Wuhuan of Cao Cao's Zheng. The Book of the Later Han Dynasty clearly records that Xianbei and Wuhuan are both from Donghu, and "the language and customs are the same".

But this hypothesis has not been widely accepted by scholars for hundreds of years: the Turks defeated the Rouran in 555, and the Avars appeared in Europe in 557, which is too fast. Moreover, the Turks are in the west of Rouran, and it is unreasonable that the Rouran people want to flee and not go east, but instead go through the Turkic hinterland to Europe. The Rouran people believed in shamanism and Buddhism, and many nobles knew Chinese characters, but the Avar Khanate did not see these traces, nor did they have any memories of their homeland.

But now that genetic testing has been finalized, the blood of the Avars and Xianbei people has been unified, proving that they are indeed the Rouran who migrated westward. Linguistic analysis also gives an interesting conclusion: the original word "Avar/Wuhuan" actually means "wriggling" in Xianbei language - no wonder Guan Rouran of the Northern Dynasty called "worm", which is actually a paraphrase.

Xianbei, Khitan and Mongolian

None of the Xianbei tribes have written down, but the Khitan people, the descendants of Yuwen Xianbei, have written words that have been handed down to this day. According to the decipherment of the Khitan language, the Khitan language is a close relative of the Mongolian language, but it is not a direct ancestor of the Mongolian language, but a sibling branch. In other words, the Khitan language is the uncle of the Mongolian language and not the father, so the Xianbei language should be the uncle of the Mongolian language and not the grandfather. Ancient Chinese texts record that Xianbei, Khitan, and Mongolia all came from Donghu, which is consistent with modern linguistics and genetic testing. History records the feud between the Xiongnu and the Donghu, the language barrier, and the genes also prove that the Xiongnu are not the direct ancestors of the modern Mongols.

The definition of the word "Avar" is also restored by comparing the Mongolian language. Many of the Xianbei names in history have now been deciphered: for example, Tuoba actually means "landlord", and "tuo" is still borrowed from the Chinese word "soil", Yuwen means "grass", and Murong means "dull and bald", which is cognate with Genghis Khan's subordinate "Muhuali". The aforementioned "Queen Mother", the slave is a wolf; Tanshi Huai means "invisible person, transparent person" - "Xianbei Tanshi Huai, his father voted for Luhou, first served in the Hun army for three years, and his wife gave birth to a child at home. Throw the deer and return, and the monster wants to kill it. The wife tasted the day and deed, heard the thunder, looked up to the sky and hail into his mouth, because he swallowed it, then became pregnant, and gave birth in October, this son must be strange, and it is advisable to look at it for a long time. The deer did not listen and abandoned it. The wife whispered to the family order to adopt Yan, the name is Tan Shihuai", no wonder it is an invisible person......

As for the statement that "the Xianbei people are all sinicized, and the northern Han people are descendants of Xianbei", it has now also been falsified by genetic testing: Xianbei's iconic paternal type accounts for 11.11% of modern Kazakhs, 9.26% of the Mongols of Hailar, 12.50% of the Altay people of the Altai Republic of Russia, and 9.09% of the Tiereut, these ethnic groups are obviously the true descendants of Xianbei.

In the modern Han people, this type is less than 6 per 1,000, which is almost negligible. Autosomally, the northern Han people can hardly detect the ancestry of ancient Northeast Asia and western steppes.

This may be due to the fact that the Xianbei regime all practiced a caste system, allowing only Xianbei people (including Xianbei Han Chinese) to serve as soldiers, which is equivalent to Kshatriya. The common Han Chinese, on the other hand, had to cultivate and weave to support the Xianbei warriors, equivalent to the Vaishyas and Shudras. That is, Gao Huan's so-called "Han people are slaves, husbands are cultivators, women are weavers, you lose silk silk, so that you have food and clothing, what is your mausoleum; Xianbei is your guest, you get a piece of corn and a silk, for you to fight thieves, make you peaceful, you are sick", this was originally a policy to ensure that the Xianbei nobles could continue to exploit the Han people, but after the split of the Western Wei and Eastern Wei, it became a meat grinder for the Xianbei people: the two countries fought for many years, and almost all the Xianbei soldiers were wiped out.

In the second year of Jiande (573), the Northern Zhou army was unable to continue, and Yuwen Yong had to order the ban to be lifted and the Han people were allowed to serve as soldiers. In this way, the national strength of the Northern Zhou Dynasty was greatly enhanced, and the Eastern Wei-Northern Qi regime was soon destroyed. The Han people also quickly controlled the Northern Zhou Dynasty through military exploits, so the Yang family was able to easily seize power. After the Yang family established the Sui Dynasty, they repeatedly ordered the disposal of the Xianbei people. Although the reform of Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou Dynasty expanded the source of troops, it was also equivalent to sounding the death knell of the Xianbei extermination.

Not only does the modern Han nationality basically have no Xianbei blood, but the latest genetic testing also proves that the Li Tang royal family is really the Li family of Longxi, and the royal family of the Sui Dynasty is really the Hongnong Yang family.

• (This article is the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

South Sea Ink

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin