Cenxun Cave: Sui–Tang Voices from Guangxi

Cenxun Cave sits in Taiping Town, Pingguo County (Baise City), Guangxi — an upland karst landscape that has preserved human activity across millennia. Radiocarbon and stratigraphic data place the human remains sampled from the cave between 440 and 658 CE, a period of political transition from the late Northern and Southern dynasties through the Sui (581–618 CE) and into the early Tang (618 CE onward). Archaeological data indicates sporadic use of karst caves in southern China for burial, shelter, and ritual during this era, but preservation and excavation records are limited for Cenxun itself.

Limited evidence suggests these individuals belonged to local communities embedded in the dynamic networks of southern China: riverine trade, upland agriculture, and cultural exchange with lowland and maritime neighbors. Material traces from nearby sites in Guangxi and the wider Lingnan region show pottery forms, iron tools, and burial customs that shift gradually across the 6th–7th centuries, reflecting both continuity and the social changes that accompanied Sui unification and Tang consolidation. Because the sample set is very small (three individuals), any model of population origin or migration must be treated as provisional. Ongoing surveys and targeted excavations in Pingguo and adjacent counties will be essential to ground these early impressions in a broader archaeological context.

Three ancient genomes from Cenxun Cave yielded mitochondrial haplogroups in haplogroup M (two samples) and the sublineage M10 (one sample). Haplogroup M is widespread across East and Southeast Asia and represents deep maternal lineages that likely date back to initial post-glacial and early Holocene expansions in the region. The presence of M10 — a recognized subclade within M — aligns with other ancient and modern East Asian mitogenomes, suggesting maternal continuity in southern China through the first millennium CE.

Importantly, no consistent Y-chromosome signal is reported for these samples, so paternal ancestry and patrilineal migration patterns cannot be assessed from this dataset. With only three individuals, statistical power is low and population-level inferences are tentative: limited evidence suggests local maternal continuity rather than wholesale replacement, but this should not be overgeneralized. Genetic affinities visible in broader ancient DNA studies of China show regional structure and gradients from north to south; Cenxun’s mtDNA fits within an expected southern profile but requires many more samples from Guangxi to clarify microregional variation. Future work combining genome-wide data, isotopes, and broader sampling will better resolve connections between Cenxun residents, neighboring populations, and the demographic shifts tied to Sui–Tang political realignments.