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Discovering A 2,000-Year-Old Tomb, A Living Creature Inside Crawled Out, Startling Archaeologists

According to KK News, when excavating an ancient Western Han tomb dating back more than 2,000 years, archaeologists felt that the structure of the entire ancient tomb was very complicated, plus geographical, climate, and location factors. , so there is a lot of water inside the ancient tomb. This made them very hard in the excavation of this tomb.

Accordingly, in order to clean and dry the tomb, experts must first absorb water and then carefully screen the mud.

Excavators are often used to help archaeologists excavate ancient tombs. Photo: KK News.

However, during the process of sifting through the mud, the experts were startled to see that something was moving. Although surprised, everyone was very curious and quickly shoveled mud to clean the ancient tomb. Then, everyone was surprised to discover a huge, very old tortoise crawling out of the ancient tomb. This is the first time this team of experts has dug a living creature from a tomb more than 2,000 years old.



Today many people like to keep a small turtle as a pet because turtles are inherently gentle, quiet and easy to care for. The Chinese traditionally believe that turtles are associated with longevity and that they also bring good luck, so keeping turtles as pets is not unusual.

Since ancient times, many Chinese people have practically kept turtles. So is the owner of the ancient tomb buried with his pet turtle?

Giant turtles were discovered in ancient tombs in Hubei. Illustration: KK News.

In fact, this is not unprecedented. Many documents say that in the past, the Chinese used tortoise shells for divination, so this animal was always considered a sacred animal, able to walk and know many things in the world of yin and yang. Some ancient tombs also record the custom of burying turtles according to the dead in ancient China. Accordingly, when burying the dead, people often bury a small turtle under the coffin with the belief that the dead person can “ride” this turtle to travel in the afterlife.



Come to think of it, some people might shudder. If the giant tortoise is indeed buried with the owner of the ancient tomb, it will have a lifespan of a thousand years. Because this ancient tomb has existed for more than 2,000 years. However, experts found that the tomb is quite closed, it seems that it has never been destroyed, so the possibility of survival for thousands of years of the turtle inside the ancient tomb is extremely low.

However, the giant old tortoise was clearly alive inside the ancient tomb. Theory and reality are so contradictory that experts rush to find a way to solve the mystery.

In the end, a small detail that went unnoticed from the beginning became the key to helping them solve the mystery. It turned out that this ancient tomb had been visited by grave robbers. The evidence is that some of the relics that should have been inside the ancient tomb were lost, although archaeologists still found many other valuable artifacts. Therefore, experts believe that the turtle accidentally entered the ancient tomb and fortunately survived from this visit to the tomb.



According to KK News, not only ancient tombs in Hubei, but in fact, there have been several cases of live turtles being discovered in other ancient tombs.

For example, in the discovery of four ancient tombs at the infrastructure construction site of a power station in Beijing, during the excavation process, a live turtle weighing 3 kg crawled out, surprising many people. At first, some people also thought that the turtle was buried with the owner of the ancient tomb and estimated it to be more than a thousand years old. But in fact, this is just an ordinary tortoise, which accidentally entered the tomb’s neck after the tomb was excavated by grave robbers to find antiquities.

But people still find a lot of valuable artifacts in the tomb.



Therefore, whether these turtles are the owners of the raised tombs or crawled in later, there is still no exact answer as well as archaeologists divided into two controversial views.