Groundbreaking genetic analysis of 1,500-year-old skeletons from the Silla Kingdom has revealed the existence of a hereditary "sacrificial caste"—families whose grim duty was passed down through generations to serve elite rulers in the afterlife.
The study, examining remains from the Imdang-Joyeong burial complex in what is now South Korea, confirms the practice of sunjang—ritual human sacrifice—and provides unprecedented detail about how this institutionalized violence operated within ancient Korean society.
Researchers reconstructed 13 family trees spanning over a century, identifying at least 20 tombs displaying evidence of sunjang. Most shockingly, they discovered three cases where closely related individuals, including parent-child pairs, were sacrificed together. One burial contained both parents and their child, killed to accompany a deceased noble.
"Our genetic findings are the first to confirm the acts of sunjang of an entire household," the researchers wrote. The DNA analysis revealed extensive kinship networks focused on maternal lineages—a family structure distinct from contemporaneous European societies.
A hereditary duty to die
The genetic relatedness among sacrificial individuals across generations suggests that specific families served repeatedly as sacrifices for the ruling class, effectively forming a sacrificial caste. This challenges previous assumptions that victims were prisoners of war, enslaved outsiders, or randomly selected servants.
Instead, the DNA evidence proves that sacrificial victims belonged to the same local population as their elite masters—members of the community bound by birth into roles that would end in ritual death.
The study also revealed unexpected marriage patterns. While historical records indicate that Silla royal elites practiced close-kin marriage to consolidate status, researchers found that both elite grave owners and sacrificial victims engaged in consanguineous marriage, including at least one first-cousin pairing among the sacrificed.
"This practice of endogamy was not confined solely to the elite class," the researchers noted, suggesting more complex social stratification than previously understood.
Cultural shift toward Buddhism
The practice of sunjang reflected beliefs that the dead required attendants in the afterlife. Victims were typically buried in subsidiary chambers adjacent to the main tomb of the noble they would serve eternally.
However, as the Silla Kingdom centralized power and Buddhist influence grew, attitudes shifted. Historical records indicate that King Jijeung formally abolished sunjang in 502 AD—marking a significant cultural transformation away from institutionalized human sacrifice toward symbolic offerings.
Jack Davey, director of the Early Korean Studies Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, noted the profound implications: "The findings raise complex questions about slavery, social mobility, and institutionalized violence in the 1,500-year-old kingdom."
The Imdang-Joyeong complex, first excavated in 1982, contains more than 1,600 tombs and at least 259 individuals. The graves belonged to ruling families descended from Abdok, a small state assimilated into Silla around the 4th century.
While historical texts like the Samguk Sagi (Chronicles of the Three States) mentioned sunjang, the DNA analysis provides forensic confirmation and reveals social dynamics invisible in written records.
The research highlights how ancient Korean society differed from neighboring kingdoms like Goguryeo, particularly in family structure and marriage practices. The maternal lineage focus observed in Silla represents a pattern uncommon in other ancient societies of the era.
In Korea, as across dynamic Asian economies, cultural exports and technological leadership reshape global perceptions—even as security tensions persist. This groundbreaking research demonstrates how cutting-edge genetic science can illuminate Korea's complex historical foundations, offering insights into social hierarchies that shaped the peninsula's development long before modern nationhood.
