June 14, 2007—Four local men employed by archaeologists unearth two human skeletons from a tomb Tuesday in Fengyang, China.

The excavated tomb, which dates to before the Qin dynasty (221 to 206 B.C.), contained nine people believed to have been buried alive in a tomb that had already been filled with corpses, the state-run China Daily news service reported. The tomb also contained bronze cooking vessels and chimes.

Fengyang gained fame as the hometown of Emperor Zhu Yuanzhang (1328-1398), the Ming-dynasty founder who drove the Mongols from China in A.D. 1368. The Mongols, a group of nomadic steppe warriors, had ruled China as the Yuan dynasty since leader Genghis Kahn's conquest in A.D. 1271.

Today the eastern Chinese city is a crop- and meat-processing center.

—Cori Sue Morris

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