Often, few people are interested in the finds of archaeological digs: broken pots, scattered bones, it usually takes a sign of cannibalism or extraordinarily old carbon dating to attract the attention of the mainstream media. However, a Taiwanese discovery announced last year turned out to be an exception to the rule. Photos of the exhumed bodies went viral, and major news organizations from Fox News to the Huffington Post reported on the story. What was that discovery? A Stone Age skeleton of a mother cradling a baby in a shared grave.

The origins of the mummified mother and baby

The scientific excavation began in 2014 and took about a year to complete. A team of archaeologists led by Chu Whei-Lee of the National Science Museum of Taiwan was working at a Neolithic site 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) inland from the western coast of Taiwan. Today, that area is called Taichung City, but the site itself has been nicknamed An-ho. Experts believe the coastlines have changed over the years and that An-ho was once a coastal village. In fact, more than 200 shark teeth have been found in the homes on the site; However, it is unknown whether these teeth were practical, decorative, or spiritual. The inhabitants of An-ho were probably Dabenkeng people.

“The Dabenkeng people were Taiwan’s first farmers, who may have come from the southern and southeastern coasts of China about 5,000 years ago,” says Chengwha Tsang of Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. “This culture is the oldest Neolithic culture found so far in Taiwan.” (Drake, 2016) The Taiwanese Dabenkeng culture featured rope pottery and stone adzes.

While the Dabenkeng lasted until the third millennium BC in mainland China, the Taiwanese Dabenkeng lasted only until around 4,500 BC. However, from Taiwan, the Dabenkeng spread throughout Southeast Asia and Oceania, bringing with them their culture and language. “They were probably the first ancestors of the Austronesian-speaking peoples living today in Taiwan and the Pacific Islands,” Tsang said (Drake, 2016).

The moving discovery of mother and baby

In An-ho, 48 graves were discovered, including five children. Most interesting of all was the shared grave of a mother looking at a baby cradled in her arms. It is not clear how they died.

“The young mother holding the baby was the one that surprised us the most,” said team leader Chu Whei-Lee. “I assume her loved ones buried them under the house,” he adds, although more evidence is needed to support that idea (Drake, 2016). “When he was unearthed, all the archaeologists and staff members were shocked. Because? Because the mother was looking at the baby in her hands,” said Chu Whei-lee (Hamacher, 2016).

Further testing, including DNA analysis, is still being carried out on the mother and child, as well as the other graves. What we already know is that the mother was 160 cm (5 feet 2 inches) tall and the baby was 50 cm (a foot and a half). Carbon dating places the time of their burial at around 4,800 years ago, placing them squarely in the Stone Age of the island. The bodies were buried in a typical north-south alignment. Unconventionally, they were placed face up (rather than face down like the other tombs at the site). Furthermore, the mother’s face is tilted to the right and downward so that she can contemplate the baby in her arms, even in skeleton form some 5,000 years later.

No doubt this ancient maternal moment is what allowed the couple to become a modern viral sensation.