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The Tarim mummies are a series of Caucasoid mummies which have been excavated in the Tarim Basin (Eastern Central Asia, today the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China), and dated to the 2nd and 1st millennium BC. Some tests have found the mummies to contain European genes, confirming the earlier suggestion that the mummies are of Indo-European descent giving further support to the idea of migrations of speakers of Indo-European languages at a very early period, suggesting the possibility of cultural exchange with the Chinese world since around 1st millennium BC.

Archeological record

The first mummies were found at the beginning of the 20th century, through the expeditions of Sir Aurel Stein and other Europeans into Central Asia. Since then many other mummies have been found and analysed, most of them now displayed in the museums of Xinjiang. Most of these Caucasoid mummies were found on the southern part of the Tarim Basin (Khotan, Niya, Qiemo) and in the eastern parts around the area of Lopnur (Subeshi near Turfan, Kroran, Qumul). For the mummies found at Pazyryk in the Altay Mountains, see Pazyryk.

Many of the mummies have been found in very good condition, owing to the dryness of the desert, and the desiccation of the corpses it induced. They share Caucasoid body features (slender, elongated bodies, angular faces, recessed eyes), and many of them have their hair intact, ranging in color from blond to red to deep brown, and generally long, curly and braided. It is not known whether their hair has been bleached by interment in salt. Their costumes, and especially textiles, may indicate a common origin with Indo-European neolithic clothing techniques or a common low-level textile technology.

The most famous mummies are the tall, red-haired "Ur-Adam" or the "Cherchen man"; his son, a small 1-year-old baby with blond hair protruding from under a red and blue felt cap, and blue stones in place of the eyes; the "Hammi Mummy"; a "red-headed beauty" found in Qizilchoqa; and the "Witches of Subeshi", who wore tall pointed hats.

Posited origins

From Libby Rosof (1997) "Penn Researcher Finds Chinese Mummies’ Surprising Roots":

"In examining small bags some of the mummies wore around their necks, Mair’s team found a connection to Iranian culture. The bags, which were buried with some mummies buried between l000 B.C. to 200-to-300 A.D., contained ephedra, a medicinal shrub used in Zoroastrian religious rituals. “The ephedra indicates that some of these people were almost certainly speaking an Iranian language,” said."

A recent article (Hemphill and Mallory, 2004) reaches the following conclusions:

"This study confirms the assertion of Han that the occupants of Alwighul and Krorän are not derived from proto-European steppe populations, but share closest affinities with Eastern Mediterranean populations. Further, the results demonstrate that such Eastern Mediterraneans may also be found at the urban centers of the Oxus civilization located in the north Bactrian oasis to the west. Affinities are especially close between Krorän, the latest of the Xinjiang samples, and Sapalli, the earliest of the Bactrian samples, while Alwighul and later samples from Bactria exhibit more distant phenetic affinities. This pattern may reflect a possible major shift in interregional contacts in Central Asia in the early centuries of the second millennium BC."

However with the DNA confirming the origin of the mummies Mair concluded (Mair etc al, 2006):

"From the evidence available, we have found that during the first 1,000 years after the Loulan Beauty, the only settlers in the Tarim Basin were Caucasoid. East Asian peoples only began showing up in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin about 3,000 years ago, Mair said, while the Uighur peoples arrived after the collapse of the Orkon Uighur Kingdom, largely based in modern day Mongolia, around the year 842."

Some scholars have placed the origins of the Caucasoid mummies in the steppes immediately north of Eastern Central Asia. Others have suggested that they arrived from the Altai Mountains, from a culture centered on the eastern steppes of central Eurasia, including modern northeastern Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikstan.

Genetic links

A team of Chinese and American researchers working in Sweden tested DNA from 52 separate mummies, including the mummy denoted "Beauty of Loulan." By genetically mapping the mummies' origins, the researchers confirmed the theory that these mummies were of Indo-European descent. In an interview with Al Jazeera, the Arabic language news source, Victor Mair, a University of Pennsylvania professor and project leader for the team that did the genetic mapping, commented that these studies were:

...extremely important because they link up eastern and western Eurasia at a formative stage of civilization (Bronze Age and early Iron Age) in a much closer way than has ever been done before.

This evidence corroborated the earlier link made between the textiles found with the mummies with early European textile and weave types and the superficial observation that the mummies had blond and red hair. An earlier study by Jilin University had concluded amidst controversy, that the mummies had female European genes.

In trying to trace the origins of these peoples Victor Mair's team suggested that these peoples may have arrived in the region by way of the forbidding Pamir Mountains about 5000 years ago.

Needless to say this evidence will be considered controversial. It refutes the contemporary nationalist claims of the regional Uighur peoples who claimed to be the indigenous peoples of the Xinjiang, rather than the Chinese Hans. In comparing the DNA to the modern day Uighur peoples, they found some genetic similarities with the mummies, but "no direct links".

About the controversy Mair has stated that:

The new finds are also forcing a reexamination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate.

Chinese scientists were initially hesitant to give up the DNA samples because they were sensitive about the nationalist Uighur claims, and to prevent a pillaging of national monuments by foreigners. However they acknowledged, when the results were announced, that this turns their understanding of conventional history on its head, and conceded that they would likely have to reexamine their understanding.

B. E. Hemphill's biodistance analysis of cranial metrics has questioned the identification of the Tarim Basin population as European, noting that the earlier population was related to the Indus Valley population, and the later with the Oxus River valley population.

Historical records

Bai people

From the 1st-millennium sources, ancient Chinese sources describe the existence of "white people with long hair" (The Bai people of the Shanhai Jing) on their northwestern borders. They had trade relations with them, and seemed to have purchased jade from them. There is possibility that these "Bai people" correspond to the Tarim mummies.

Yuezhi

In the same geographical area, reference to the Yuezhi was made in name in 645 BC by the Chinese economist Guan Zhong, raising the possibility that the Caucasoid mummies may have been identical and ancestors to the Yuezhi. Guan Zhong described the Yuzhi 禺氏, or Niuzhi 牛氏, as a people from the north-west who supplied jade to the Chinese from the nearby mountains of Yuzhi 禺氏 at Gansu. The supply of jade from the Tarim Basin from ancient times is also well excavated: "It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BCE the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China." (Liu (2001), pp. 267-268). A large part of the Yuezhi, vanquished by the Xiongnu, were to migrate to southern Asia in the 2nd century BC, and later establish the Kushan Empire in northern India and Afghanistan.

Roman accounts

Pliny reports a curious description of the Seres (in the territories of northwestern China) made by an embassy from Taprobane to Emperor Claudius, saying that they "exceeded the ordinary human height, had flaxen hair, and blue eyes, and made an uncouth sort of noise by way of talking", suggesting they may be referring to the ancient Caucasian populations of the Tarim Basin:

"They also informed us that the side of their island (Taprobane) which lies opposite to India is ten thousand stadia in length, and runs in a south-easterly direction--that beyond the Emodian Mountains (Himalayas) they look towards the Serve (Seres), whose acquaintance they had also made in the pursuits of commerce; that the father of Rachias (the ambassador) had frequently visited their country, and that the Seræ always came to meet them on their arrival. These people, they said, exceeded the ordinary human height, had flaxen hair, and blue eyes, and made an uncouth sort of noise by way of talking, having no language of their own for the purpose of communicating their thoughts. The rest of their information (on the Serae) was of a similar nature to that communicated by our merchants. It was to the effect that the merchandise on sale was left by them upon the opposite bank of a river on their coast, and it was then removed by the natives, if they thought proper to deal on terms of exchange. On no grounds ought luxury with greater reason to be detested by us, than if we only transport our thoughts to these scenes, and then reflect, what are its demands, to what distant spots it sends in order to satisfy them, and for how mean and how unworthy an end!" (Pliny the Elder, The Natural History, Chap XXIV "Taprobane")

Tocharians

The Indo-European Tocharian languages also have been attested in the same geographical area, and although the first known epigraphic evidence dates to the 6th century CE, the degree of differentiation between Tocharian A and Tocharian B, and the absence of Tocharian language remains beyond that area, tends to indicate that a common Tocharian language existed in the same area during the second half of the 1st millennium BC. Although Tocharian texts have never been found in direct relation with the mummies, their identical geographical location and common non-Chinese origin suggest that the mummies were related to the Tocharians and spoke a similar Indo-European language.

Cultural exchanges

The presence of Indo-European speakers in the Tarim Basin in the 1st millennium BC suggests that cultural exchanges happened between Indo-European and Chinese populations at a very early date. It has been suggested that such activities as chariot warfare and bronze-making may have been transmitted to the east by these Indo-European nomads.

These theories would go against the idea that the East and West developed their civilizations independent of each other, but suggest, on the contrary that, some form of transmission may have happened.

Links and footnotes

1. Bioarchaeology: The Lives and Lifestyles of Past People, Clark Spencer Larsen, Journal of Archaeological Research, Vol. 10, No. 2, June 2002 . http://monkey.sbs.ohio-state.edu/bioarch/PDF/ProfLarsen-JARarticle.pdf . Hemphill, B.E. 2000. American Journal of Physical Anthropology. (Supplement 30): 176 (abstract)

• Washington Times Article: Caucasians preceded East Asians in basin.
• The Tarim Mummies. J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair. Simon Fraser University.
• Tracking the Tarim Mummies. David W. Anthony.

References

• The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair (2000). Thames & Hudson. London. ISBN 0-500-05101-1
• The Mummies of Ürümchi. Elizabeth Wayland Barber (1999). London. Pan Books. ISBN 0-330-36897-4
• Warrior Women: An Archaeologist’s Search for History’s Hidden Heroines. Jeannine Davis-Kimball with Mona Behan (2002). Warner Books, New York. First Trade Edition 2003. ISBN 0-446-67983-6 (pbk)
• Penn Researcher Finds Chinese Mummies' Surprising Roots. Rosof, L. (1997) University of Pennsylvannia Almanac, Vol. 44, No. 3, Pages 12-13, 09/09/1997.

• Chinese archaeology
• Mummies
• Xinjiang
• Central Asian Studies
• Tocharians