The Tomb That Told of a Women’s Kingdom

historyanalysisSAPIENS3rd–4th century AD · Ngari, Tibet

The Tomb That Told of a Women’s Kingdom

the gist

In 2005 a truck collapsed ground on a dirt road in western Tibet, exposing a tomb. Excavations in 2012-2014 at Gurugyam Cemetery, on the upper Xiangquan River in Ngari, uncovered 11 tombs, eight from the 3rd-4th centuries. Tomb M2 was unusually large, and DNA analysis showed its occupant was a woman. Researchers first suspected a sacrificed attendant, but growing evidence suggests she was a high-status woman, possibly a political leader. She may be linked to the legendary "Women's Kingdom" (Nüguo), described in 7th-8th-century Chinese texts as a realm ruled by women on the Tibetan Plateau.

how it works

Archaeologists infer rank from tomb size, construction and surviving goods, and ancient DNA now settles biological sex, so interpretations no longer have to rest on assumptions.

so what

The find challenges the assumption that powerful burials must belong to men, an assumption that shaped early readings of the remains. It suggests that stories about female-ruled societies may rest on real history.

the bigger pattern

Re-examining old burials with DNA has repeatedly revealed high-status women, such as the so-called Viking warrior of Birka, whose sex was misjudged for over a century.

fun fact

Ancient DNA analysis has overturned assumptions about the sex of many ancient burials once assumed to be male warriors.

D. W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat (1909)

the gist

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.

how it works

To corner a market, a trader buys up most of the available supply and the futures contracts that promise more. Anyone who has to deliver the commodity must then buy from the cornerer at whatever price is demanded. The trader profits until the stock is released or the scheme collapses.

so what

A century on, it still shows how markets can be rigged by someone who controls supply, and how the people at either end, farmers and eaters, pay for it. It also helped establish editing as a way to argue a point, not just tell a story.

the bigger pattern

Corners have recurred whenever supply could be locked up, from the Hunt brothers' attempt on silver in 1979 to 1980 to the 'Black Friday' gold panic of 1869. Many such schemes end by collapsing, and the response is often new rules on speculation.

fun fact

In the film the Wheat King dies by falling into a grain elevator and being buried in the wheat he hoarded, an ending borrowed from Norris's novel The Octopus.

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