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A 300-year-old warship, the one in which two star weddings were reduced to skeletons while perfectly preserved, has baffled Chinese archaeologists.

Behind the open caps, the man’s face, experts said, was perfectly preserved. Within hours, however, his face began to turn black and a foul odor emanated from his body.

The skin on the bodies, which has now been taken to the local university for study, has also turned black. The body is believed to belong to the Qi dynasty. It was discovered on October 10 at a two-meter-deep underground construction site in the province of Hubei, the center of Chia.

Dr Luks Nickel, a specialist in Chinese art and archeology at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, told MailOnline that preservations like these are sontencial. “The Chinese do some kind of treatment of the body to preserve it, as is known in ancient Egypt, for example,” she explained.

However, I did protect the body by placing it inside copper coffins and sealing it with wax. So the physical integrity of the body was important to them. In ancient Chiapas, at least, the dead were expected to remain in the body for the burial. Occasionally, the bodies of the Qi dynasty were preserved by the patriarchal covetousness that was hidden inside the coffin.

In this case, the body may have had a lacquered coffin, common at that time. This means that the surface of the body would have been entirely smooth to the touch. Dr. Nickel added that if this were the case, as soon as the air hit the body, the natural process would be activated quickly and the body would disintegrate in a short time.

Once the coffin was opened by historians in Xi’a, it was observed that the man’s face was almost normal, but within hours he began to fade and quickly disintegrated. Historian Dog Hsiung said: “The clothing on the body indicates that it was the most important figure of the ancient Qin era. The surprising thing is how time seems trapped in the bodies, even after years of each day.”

From 1644 to 1912, the Qing Dynasty succeeded the Ming Dynasty and was the last imperial dynasty of China before the creation of the Republic of China. Under the Qing’s territorial expansion, the empire grew to three times its size and the population increased from around 150 million to 450 million.

The present-day boundaries of China are largely based on the territorial control exerted by the Qing Dynasty. Burial rituals in the Qing Dynasty were the responsibility of officials. Provincial officials were assigned an alternate throne room, where the deceased almost seemed to preserve the body. Professor Dong proposed an alternative theory for preservation.

“It’s possible the man’s family used some materials to preserve the body,” he said. “Once it was opened, the natural process of decay could really start.” “We are working hard to save what there is.”

Historian Dong Xiang said, “The clothes on the body indicate he was a very senior official from the early Qing Dynasty. What is amazing is the way time seems to be catching up on the corpse, aging hundreds of years in a day.”

The Qing Dynasty, as well as the preceding Ming Dynasty, are known for their well-preserved corpses. In 2011, a 700-year-old mummy was discovered in excellent condition in eastern China. The corpse of the high-ranking woman believed to be from the Ming Dynasty was stumbled upon by a team who were looking to expand a street.

Discovered two meters below the road surface, the woman’s features—from her head to her shoes—retained their original condition and hardly deteriorated. The mummy was wearing traditional Ming Dynasty costume and in the coffin were bronze mirrors, ceramics, ancient writings, and other relics.

Wang Weiyin, the curator of the Museum of Taizhou, stated that the mummy’s clothes were mainly made of silk, with a small amount of cotton. Researchers hope that the findings could help them understand the final rituals and customs of the Qing Dynasty, as well as more about how bodies were preserved.