The remains of 97 human bodies have been found stuffed into a small 5,000-year-old house in a prehistoric village in northeast China.

They include the bodies of juveniles, young adults and middle-age adults - all crammed into a house measuring just 20 square metres.

Experts say the scene could have been the result of a 'prehistoric disaster,' and say an epidemic of some sort may be responsible.

The home includes the bodies of juveniles, young adults and middle-age adults - all crammed into a house measuring just 20 square metres.

The site, whose modern-day name is 'Hamin Mangha,' dates back to a time before writing was used in the area, when people lived in relatively small settlements, growing crops and hunting for food.

The village contains the remains of pottery, grinding instruments, arrows and spearheads, providing information on their way of life.

The house with the bodies, dubbed 'F40,' was just 210 square feet (about 20 square meters).

'Hamin Mangha site is the largest and best-preserved prehistoric settlement site found to date in northeast China,' a team of archaeologists wrote in a translated report published in the most recent edition of the journal Chinese Archaeology.

'The skeletons in the northwest are relatively complete, while those in the east often [have] only skulls, with limb bones scarcely remaining,' the archaeologists wrote.

'But in the south, limb bones were discovered in a mess, forming two or three layers.'

'On the floor, numerous human skeletons are disorderly scattered,' the archaeologists wrote.

In a second report, Jilin team found that the people in that house died as the result of a 'prehistoric disaster' that resulted in dead bodies being stuffed into the house.

At some point the structure burnt down, according to Livescience..

The fire likely caused wooden beams of the roof to collapse, leaving parts of skulls and limb bones not only charred but also deformed in some way, the archaeologists wrote.

The remains were never buried and were left behind for archaeologists to discover 5,000 years later.

An anthropological team at Jilin University in China is studying the prehistoric remains, trying to determine what happened to these people.

The team has published a second study, in Chinese, in the Jilin University Journal – Social Sciences edition, on their finds. (A brief English-language summary of their results is available on the American Association of Physical Anthropologists website.)

The Jilin team found that the people in that house died as the result of a 'prehistoric disaster' that resulted in dead bodies being stuffed into the house.

The dead came in faster than they could be buried.

The prehistoric village contained dozens of small one-room houses.

'Many archaeological sites in China contain human remains in building contexts that suggest that they are the site of catastrophic events and mass disasters,' wrote team leaders Ya Wei Zhou and Hong Zhu in the study.

'The Hamin Mangha Site in Inner Mongolia exemplifies such a site.

'Human skeletal remains were recovered from a collapsed half crypt type house (F40), preserved by fire.'

'This similarity may indicate that the cause of the Hamin Mangha site was similar to that of the Miaozigou sites.

'That is, they both possibly relate to an outbreak of an acute infectious disease (pestilence).

'The human bone accumulation in F40 was formed because ancient humans put remains into the house successively and stacked centrally.'

However, the scientists did not speculate as to what disease it may have been.

The excavation was carried out by researchers from the Inner Mongolian Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and theResearch Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology of Jilin University.



