Experts Stumble on Oldest Surviving Anatomical Atlas With Acupuncture Text on Silk Hiding in Plain Sight

Today, people have various technological means to form an anatomical map of the human body. But that wasn't the case in the past, and therefore researchers for decades have been trying to figure out how ancient humans learned about their bodies. Researchers believe they drew body maps to describe their perception of human bodies.

In the 1970s archeologists uncovered a series of 2,200-year-old texts from China written on silk parchments, later claimed to be the oldest surviving anatomical atlas in the world by another set of researchers. Findings regarding these texts were published in the journal The Anatomical Record. 

The texts were found in tombs owned by Marquis Dai, a Chinese nobleman, at the Mawangdui site. These tombs were built by Marquis Dai for his wife and son, and the texts were placed there in 168 B.C.E. After the discovery of the texts, many scholars attempted to translate them but had little to no success.

A research team led by Vivien Shaw, an anatomy lecturer at Bangor University in Wales in the United Kingdom finally managed to do so and stated that they "are the oldest surviving anatomical atlas in the world."

The reason why the previous experts found it difficult to translate the texts was because they were written in hard-to-understand Chinese characters. Shaw's team took a multifaceted approach to get the work done.

"The skills necessary to interpret them are diverse, requiring the researcher firstly to read the original Chinese, and secondly to perform the anatomical investigations that allow a re-viewing of the structures that the texts refer to," the researchers added in the paper. 

According to the researchers, the writings focus on the practice of acupuncture. The study claims that the text "both predate and inform the later acupuncture texts, which have been the foundation for acupuncture practice in the subsequent two millennia."

For experts, the discovery is crucial as it disregards the widespread belief that there is no scientific foundation behind the 'anatomy of acupuncture.' The writings clearly indicate that past experts "were in fact writing about the physical body," according to the researchers.

The biggest breakthrough for researchers in the translation happened when they were able to figure out that "meridians" stood for human blood vessels. Based on this belief one of the sentences in the writings came out to be " starts at the big toe and runs along the medial surface of the leg and thigh. Connects at the ankle, knee, and thigh. It travels along the adductors of the thigh, and covers the abdomen," according to researchers. 

The study believes that the purpose of the text was to provide a concise description of the human body to "students and practitioners of medicine in ancient China." Such an activity is only possible if humans are dissected and analyzed in detail.

In ancient China, human remains were considered sacred and were not disturbed. However, the same principle was not applied to convicts. Researchers believe that the anatomical map was created using such bodies of lawbreakers.

Before this finding the oldest anatomical atlas of the human body was attributed to Herophilus (335–280 B.C.) and Erasistratus (304-c.250 B.C.) from Egypt, Live Science reported. But most of their texts have been lost, and whatever little is known about them is through other writings. Hence, the Chinese texts began to be regarded as the earliest surviving anatomical atlas.