First, family law.
In order to find out the blood relationship of children, the ancients had their own methods and often looked for clues from "human nature".
During the Western Han Dynasty, there was a big family in Yingchuan (now Yuzhou City, Henan Province). The two brothers live together and the daughter-in-law is pregnant. My brother and daughter-in-law miscarried, but she concealed the truth and took the boy born to her brother and daughter-in-law as her own. The lawsuit has been fought for three years, but there is still no result.
Ba Huang, the former prime minister of Xuan Di, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, heard about it and decided to do paternity test. The method is to ask someone to take the children to the lobby, and let the younger brothers and sisters grab the children, and whoever grabs them will belong to them. Sister-in-law grabbed the child hard, and she was afraid of hurting the child, and her expression was very sad.
Seeing this scene, Ba Huang made an appraisal conclusion: the child was born to her brother-in-law.
This method of paternity test from the perspective of ethics and affection has always been adopted by judicial officials in later generations. For example, during the Northern Wei Dynasty, when Li Chong was appointed as the secretariat of Yangzhou (Suiyang), he also used a similar method to judge the "dispute case". At that time, a man named Mrs. Gou lost his 3-year-old son, and later found the child in the home of a man named Zhao. But both families say that the child is their own, and both neighbors can prove that there is no statutory case in the county.
After receiving the case, Li Chong isolated the child from the two families for a few days, and then suddenly sent messengers to the two families to report that the child died of sudden illness and was taken back for burial. When Gou Tai heard about it, he was very sad, but Zhao was not sad at all, but just sighed. In this regard, Li Chong confirmed the child as Gou Tai and "sent the child back to Thailand".
Ba Huang and Li Chong are famous experts in ancient times. Their methods for paternity testing can be summarized as "family law", and "unnatural" often becomes one of the most critical judgment bases in paternity testing.
Family law was often used in ancient judicial expertise, but sometimes it didn't work. For example, in the case of Ba Huang, what if two sisters-in-law are afraid of hurting their children? Similarly, if both Gou Jian and Zhao are sad about the sudden death of their children, how will they make a decision? From the judicial point of view, this is a failed case.
Second, the common sense method
In the Northern Song Dynasty, Li Nangong was appointed as the county magistrate of Changsha, and a widow remarried with her son. Seven years later, the ex-husband came to pick up his son. The woman refused, saying that the child was not the son of her ex-husband. Li Nangong took the case of "taking care of children" and only asked a few words, then ended the lawsuit.
Li Nangong asked first, "How old is the child?" The ex-husband replied that the child was 9 years old and the woman said that the child was 7 years old; The second sentence, () "Did the child change his teeth?" The woman said it was changed last year. In this regard, Nan Li realized that children are the blood of her ex-husband. Why did Li Nangong make this appraisal conclusion? It is common sense for boys to change their teeth at the age of 8.
When Lu Mu was a servant in Fujian, there was a man named Zhou who adopted his nephew as his son in his early years. Later, his concubine gave him a son. After Zhou's death, my nephew wanted to monopolize the family property, insisting that the child I gave birth to was not my uncle's own son and wanted to drive away my mother and son.
After receiving the complaint from my concubine, Lumu called all the people in the Zhou family and quietly put my son among several children, so that they could identify who looked like Zhou's son. Everyone mentioned the children born to my concubine. Finally, Lumu decided that Zhou's nephew was lying and his concubine's son was Zhou's son, so he awarded all Zhou's property to Zhou and his concubine's son.
The above two kinds of paternity tests, the former is based on the physiological age of the child's teeth changes, and the latter is based on the appearance. The basis of judgment and identification comes from common sense of physiology and life, which can be regarded as "common sense method" paternity test.
Third, the method of combining blood.
A case of paternity test recorded in Ji Xiaolan's notes in Yuewei Caotang Huaixi Magazine No.1 in Qing Dynasty is very "story-like".
A businessman in Shanxi went out to do business, and his property was taken care of by his brother. During his absence, he married a daughter-in-law and gave birth to a son. Ten years later, the wife died, and the businessman took his son back to his hometown. The merchant's brother was afraid that his brother would ask for property, and lied that the child was adopted by his brother and could not inherit his father's property. The presiding county magistrate made a paternity test at the trial site: the blood of the merchant's father and son dripped into the clear water at the same time, and the blood of the father and son quickly condensed together. The conclusion of the county magistrate's appraisal soon came out: the merchant's son is his own son.
The merchant's brother didn't believe in guillotines. After returning home, I did the experiment myself, and I dropped my own blood and my son's blood into the water, but none of them coagulated. Now, the merchant's brother has found a reason to refute, claiming that the paternity test method used by the county magistrate is unreasonable and the conclusion is not sufficient.
That's even more dramatic. As soon as the villagers heard that the blood relationship between the younger brother and the father was incoherent, they talked behind their backs and said that the son was not his own, but his wife was pregnant with someone else. The merchant's brother saw a nose and eyes scattered outside, so he became suspicious and tracked down his wife and adulterer. As a result, he really discovered the fact that his wife cuckolded herself.
In ancient times, the method of paternity test by county magistrate was called "combining blood". In the case that affection and common sense cannot be judged, they will "combine blood."
Modern times have found that people's blood types are divided into A, B, AB, O and so on. Paternity identification can be partially realized by using blood type. It can be said that the blood binding method is an ancient "DNA identification technology" in China. In fact, if anyone's blood drops together, it will soon condense into one.
Four, bone drop method
The above three paternity testing methods are basically carried out between living people. If one party has died, how to do paternity test?
Xie Cheng, a historian in the Three Kingdoms period, recorded such a story in the biography of sages in Huiji: a man named Kerwin Chen, whose brother crossed the sea and died, went to identify the body. But fifty or sixty people died together, and the bodies rotted and could not be recognized from the appearance and posture. Kerwin Chen then cut open his arm and bled it on the bone to observe its reaction. One of the bones, after dripping on Kerwin Chen's blood, quickly seeped into the bone, and the rest flowed out. On this basis, Kerwin Chen decided that the body belonged to his brother.
During the Southern Dynasties, this method of paternity testing by observing the blood absorbed by bones was very popular, the most famous of which was the case of "yu zhang Wang Xiao fully recognizing his father". According to Xiao Chuan's records, Wu Shuyuan, the concubine of Xiao Baojuan, who was in a daze in the south, was very beautiful. After the demise of Qi, Xiao Yan of Liang Wudi took her as his own and entered the harem. Wu Shuyuan gave birth to a son in seven months, named Xiaozong. Palace said, the child's biological father is not Xiao Yan, but Xiao Baojuan.
When Xiaozong grew up, he also doubted his real life experience. He believes in the folk saying that "the blood of the living is the bone of the dead, that is, father and son". He secretly dug the tomb of Dong Hunhou, pulled out the bone, and dripped his own blood on the bone, and the blood soon penetrated into the bone.
In order to prove the reliability of the secret method of folk affection, Xiaozong experimented with his newborn second son, quietly killed the child, sent someone to bury it, and then sent someone to dig out the child's bones and drop his own blood into the skull that was still seeping in. At this point, Mr. Xiao confirmed that his biological father was Xiao Baojuan.
The "bone-breaking method", commonly known as "bone-breaking relatives", was introduced in detail in the ancient judicial masterpiece Record of Wrongful Cases, and was written into the ancient forensic manual as a "scientific means".
Bone drop method is actually a blood drop method. At first, it was mainly used to deal with those who deliberately misunderstood, applied for remains and defrauded the deceased of their inheritance rights. Like the drop of blood method, it is unscientific whether blood can penetrate into bones alone. Modern forensic experiments have found that if the periosteum is rotten, no matter who's blood can seep in; On the other hand, if the periosteum is not rotted, it cannot be absorbed even on the blood drops of relatives.