She Survived Losing Her Nose: 700-Year-Old Skull May Be the First Physical Evidence of a Brutal Chinese Punishment

'I've got your nose!' are words I am sure most of us have heard at least once. My dad really enjoyed stealing my nose when I was a child. It was always a funny bit of teasing, and eventually I would steal his too!

But when you think about it, actually losing your nose would be an utterly terrifying experience. Your nose warms and humidifies air, traps dust and pathogens, helps drain your sinuses, and of course lets you smell.

However, you can live without one; it just makes life that much more miserable, and of course it's something you cannot easily hide. Long after the wound healed, the stares, whispers and judgement would remain. These are probably some of the reasons the removal of your nose was sometimes used as a form of extreme punishment.

This includes ancient China, where it was often listed alongside other major punishments. Texts describe hundreds, even thousands, of people being punished by having their noses removed, yet despite abundant textual evidence, no physical evidence had ever been found in China.

But a recent study may just change that. The study examines the remains of a woman with a rather unusual skull: the part where her nose should have been was largely missing. Wanting to know if this was the result of disease or maybe something more sinister, the research team led by Yawei Zhou took a closer look.

It seems that hundreds of years ago, during the Yuan–Ming Dynasties, this woman may have done something that resulted in her nose, including parts of the bone, being chopped off, and somehow she survived! The find offers a rare glimpse into ancient China's penal system and the medical care that may have allowed her to survive.

One Amongst Hundreds in Sanzhiyuan

The Sanzhiyuan Cemetery lies in Henan Province, China. Needing to work quickly before the construction of the new Sanmenxia Vocational and Technical College campus in Sanmenxia City, archaeologists excavated the site in 2019, recording the ancient tombs, collecting the remains and trying to figure out as much as they could about the cemetery and those interred within.

They managed to uncover 299 tombs, one of which was M318.

From the get-go, the burial was unusual: it was the only tomb in the entire cemetery dated to the Yuan Dynasty. The tomb was simple, consisting only of a burial chamber with a ramp and a decayed coffin. The only grave good the individual was given, or at least the only one to survive, was a copper hairpin.

Radiocarbon dating places the remains between 1298 and 1404 CE, corresponding to the late Yuan or perhaps the early Ming Dynasty, though the tomb was recorded as being Yuan.

Because the excavation was so rushed, no one noticed at the time that the body had been laid face down. Only later, when the researchers studied the single photo taken of the grave, did they realise the skeleton was lying on its front, making them the only individual in the entire cemetery placed in their tomb in this way. But what really caught the researchers' eye was the nose, or rather the extensive damage they saw around it.

Without a tombstone telling them who this person was, they had to piece together the evidence themselves by examining the remains and sleuthing through historic texts for clues.

The Identity of the Interred

First, they wanted to determine the individual's age and sex. To determine her sex, the researchers examined her skull and pelvis, ranking them on a scale from 1 (more female) to 5 (more male) using features like width and how prominent, pointy, and sharp they were. The skull was gracile and the pelvis wide, with various features like a small mastoid process, a wide ischial notch, and others suggesting the interred was female.

Meanwhile, the wear of her teeth, the surface of her pelvis and the fusion of her skull sutures indicated she was likely between 40 and 45 when she died.

Whatever her life was like, it seems to have been difficult, with the researchers finding various signs of ageing and ill health, including a worn-out spine, missing teeth, cavities, inflammation in her leg bones and a nasty infection under one of her back teeth. And when I say nasty, I mean nasty (it has to be quite bad to leave a mark on your bones).

And while her simple grave and little copper hairpin already suggested it, her diet, determined via stable isotopes, supported the idea that she had lived off a simple diet consisting mainly of C4 plants like millet, with little animal protein, consistent with that of a commoner.

But the researchers were most curious about her nose. We have all seen a skull; the area where the nose should be often looks a bit like a weird upside-down heart, but for M318 it was much wider than normal, around 34 mm compared to an average of about 25 mm for other women in the cemetery, while the lower half of the bones forming the bridge of her nose was missing and a small pointy bit at the bottom of her nose had been cut off. Even some of the thin parts inside her nose were gone.

But surprisingly, the edges of the bones had healed, meaning she had lived for years after the incident.

Why Was Her Nose Missing?

Wanting to know what happened, the researchers began checking off various possible scenarios. Perhaps this was a congenital defect, aka, she was born this way, but every other part of her facial bones had developed normally, suggesting this was not the cause.

Perhaps she had had cancer, a blight to humanity since time immemorial, which could have eaten away at the bone or caused strange new bone to form. But cancer leaves behind tell-tale destruction which her skull lacked. Again, the researchers looked for an alternative. A sinus infection perhaps, but again none of the surrounding bone was affected.

While syphilis, leprosy and various other similar diseases are known to destroy the nose, they don't typically target only the nose and call it a day; they damage the bones across the body. And M318's bones were all fairly normal.

Though they could not rule out that the nose was removed surgically, perhaps to prevent the further spread of infection, it simply seemed unlikely. So maybe it was an accident; she fell, or maybe she stood behind a horse which gave a right good kick to the face? But why would only her nose be damaged? Why not knock out some teeth, or injure a cheekbone, you know, the usual damage that occurs when one injures their face?

Maybe she just chose to cut off her nose. While rare in ancient China, some stories reveal how people would cut off their own noses, either while mourning or, for women, to protect their chastity. But there are no records of this happening after the Han Dynasty, over a thousand years before her time, and the damage seems too severe to be self-inflicted.

Almost every scenario the researchers could think of seemed less likely, save for one: punishment.

Being buried face down, especially in later Chinese history such as during the Yuan dynasty, was often linked to criminals, while Yuan law stated that crimes such as stealing cattle or horses could be punished by cutting off the nose.

Given her commoner status, it may be that she committed a theft; what she took is unknown, but it cost her her nose. And yet she survived. The wound would have bled heavily, requiring immediate treatment to stop the bleeding and prevent infection.

In ancient China, medical assistance was provided immediately even after punishments such as this one to increase the amputee's likelihood of survival. An odd bony growth at the edge of the nasal opening, possibly the result of something pressing against the side of her nose, hints she may even have had a sort of prosthetic nose, though it could also be the result of inflammation as the wound healed.

Together with her face-down burial, the evidence points to a deliberate cutting off of the nose, most likely as punishment, rather than a disease.

Her survival suggests that even ordinary people in ancient China, or rather poor commoners with no grave goods besides a copper hairpin, would have had access to medical and social care. This care would have been paramount not just as the wound healed but possibly long after, as she struggled to breathe properly, filter dust and warm air. And who knows, perhaps the cutting of her nose also affected the muscles of her upper lip, limiting movement and thus things like facial expressions and even speech.

Few medical records survive from the short-lived Yuan Dynasty, so researchers couldn't work out what tools were used or how she was treated afterwards. But whatever was available at the time was enough to keep her alive.

A punishment like that must have been torture, not just when it was first inflicted but for the rest of her life. Her face became a permanent reminder of her crime, whether she deserved it or not, and no matter how much she tried to make up for it.

Do you think the evidence points to punishment, or could something else explain her missing nose? And what do you imagine her life was like, living with a face that told everyone her past?

Let me know what you think, and if you'd like to support this blog and the person writing it, you can chip in once, monthly, or yearly. Only if you'd like to.

Reference

Zhou, Y., Zhang, C., Yan, F., & Wang, Q. (2026). First skeletal evidence of facial mutilation as a form of punishment from ancient China (1298–1404 CE): A unique archaeological case of nasal amputation in Yuan-Ming Dynasties. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 75, 106031. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.106031