Royal Mongolian Burial Discovered in Salt Mine

This was under "Latest News" at Minerva Online -- no date attached, so I really have no idea how current this story might be (possibly May, 2012):

Royal Mongolian mother and child found in salt mine

The mummified bodies of a Mongolian queen and her baby have been discovered in south-west Mongolia, in the territory of Bayankhongor, near the Chinese border. The bodies were recovered from a salt mine by a team of researchers from the National University of Mongolia after the possibility of burial sites in rock caves was raised by the governor of the local administrative district. It was feared that the caves, which contain rock salt, could be exploited by miners with detrimental effect on the integrity of the sites. Thought to belong to the Yuan Dynasty, the dominant power in Mongolia and northern China between 1271 and 1368, the cave contained the mummified woman, and a child wrapped in a sheepskin. The burial was identified as royal by the presence of numerous high-prestige objects including a royal headdress with copper and pearl ornamentation, copper earrings, a mirror and a comb. The remains of a woman, reckoned to be aged 60, with remnants of clothes, a belt buckle, and a wooden bow was also unearthed. Experts are currently working to stabilise and preserve the objects and with a view to showing them in the exhibition, Chinggis Khaan and Archaeological Discoveries of Mongolians, which will be held to celebrate the 850th birthday of Genghis Khan later this year in Kharkhoran Museum.

Alexander Ekserdjian

Oh please! Unless the rules of nature have changed drastically in about 500 years, no way was a 60 year old woman the mother of an "child" unless the child was at least 10 to 12 years old!  Give me a break! There is no way really, of knowing if there was even a relationship between the woman and the child unless/until DNA testing is done or some names are found or a couple of inscriptions that describe who the woman and child are.  For all we know at present, the child could have been a human sacrifice and the buried woman was never a mother at all!  Have they done a virginity check???  (That's a joke, people!)