The first emperor of China famously chose to be buried alongside more than 8,000 terracotta soldiers in full military regalia, together with war chariots, acrobats and musicians.
Yet his grandmother seems to have kept even stranger company in the afterlife. The excavation of a vast tomb attributed to the shadowy Lady Xia has uncovered the skull of a previously unknown species of gibbon alongside the skeletons of lynxes, leopards and bears.
The funerary complex, discovered in 2006 under a business college near Xi’an, the ancient imperial capital in what is now Shaanxi province, sprawls over 43 acres and includes a dozen pits of animal skeletons.
The site has been burnt and looted several times over the 22 centuries since Lady Xia’s death, leaving only remnants…