The Tarim mummies show that the western part of present-day China was inhabited by people with Caucasian features before the arrival of the Chinese around AD 0.
There are several theories that seek to explain, how it is possible for an Asian area to be inhabited by European types.
The steppe theory states that the Caucasian types in the Tarim Basin are the easternmost outpost of the Indo-European expansion across the steppe from Yamnaya on the Caspian Sea, through Andronovo around the Aral Sea and Afanasievo around Lake Baikal to the Tocharian in the Tarim Basin area.
The oasis theory states that the Indo-European settlers, who had established irrigated agriculture at the Oxus River, continued across the Pamir Pass and used their knowledge of irrigation to cultivate the Tarim Basin.
The Inner Asian Mountain Corridor hypothesis assumes that the "Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex" spread to the Tarim Basin.
However, none of this can be proven in the genes of the mummies. There are reasons to believe that the original inhabitants of European type have been there "always", as descendants of the "Ancient North Eurasians" (ANE) who hunted on the Mammoth Steppe during the last ice age.
1. European-type mummies in a Chinese desert
In April 1991, the American "Discovery Magazine" published a series of photos of mysterious mummies found in the sands of the Taklamakhan Desert in the Tarim Basin in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.
A selection of mummies from the Tarim Basin. Photo Yokarniybabai Wikipedia
The mummies have blond, red or reddish-brown hair. They have deep-set eyes, long noses, thick beards and tall, often lanky, figures. Some are dressed in fur moccasins, woolen shawls and feathered hats, and some were buried with small baskets of grain and a small piece of cheese. The coffins were often decorated with ox skulls.
Textile expert Elizabeth Barber noted that the mummies wear colorful clothes made of wool from West Eurasian sheep breeds, and their special diagonal weaving technique is found, apart from Tarim, only among the Celts of the Hallstatt culture in Central Europe in the Bronze Age.
It never rains in the Taklamakhan Desert, and therefore the mummies here are better preserved than the Egyptian ones.
In connection with the construction of railways and oil pipelines, hundreds of mummies have been excavated in the desert of the Tarim Basin, most of them in the eastern part.
According to carbon-14 dating, the oldest lived around 2,000 BC, which is more than 3,000 years before Marco Polo traveled to Kublai Khan's court in Beijing. Up until the year 0, all the mummies are of the "caucasian" type. That is, the type most common among Europeans. But from the year 0 onwards, more and more Chinese, Tibetan and Turkish mummies appear.
Which contradicts the global myth that it was the evil white imperialists from Europe, who went out into the world and killed and plundered the indigenous peoples. Because the caucasian types were quite clearly the indigenous people of the Tarim Basin. It is also clear that they are no longer found in Tarim. So either they committed collective suicide at some point, or, more likely, were massacred by Tibetans, Mongols and Turks, the latter of whom today inhabit the Tarim Basin and insist on calling it East Turkestan.
The British-Hungarian explorer Aurel Stein was the first Westerner to find a mummy in the Tarim Basin. Here Stein and one of his men are with the dog Dash, who followed him everywhere, perhaps around 1907. Photo The British Library.
At the Xiaohe site not far from ancient Loulan, which was located on the shore of the now-vanished salt lake, Lob Nor, Chinese archaeologists have excavated 167 mummified bodies from around 2000 BC.
One of the best-known mummies is the "Cherchen Man" found in Cherchen a few hundred kilometers west of Dunhuang. He was 1.8 m. tall, had a light brown or reddish beard, and wore trousers and a woolen tunika and jacket. He died when he was 55 years old around the year 1000 BC.
The "Cherchen Woman" from the same tomb also died around 1000 BC as a young woman. She was 1.8 m. tall. She wore deerskin boots and a red woolen dress.
The most famous mummy is the "Beauty of Loulan", who died in 1800 BC at the age of about 45. Her clothes were made of fur and wool; She wore fur moccasins with her hair out. On her head she wore a woolen cap with a large feather in it. She was excavated at a burial ground not far from Loulan, a city and kingdom that lay on the shores of the now-vanished salt lake, Lop Nor.
2. Tarim Basin
In Snorri's "Younger Edda" under "Gylfaginning" it is told about the Earth: "Then Gangleri spoke: These are great tidings, which I now hear. It is a great blacksmith's craft and cunningly made. How was the Earth conceived?"
The Tarim Basin surrounded by snow-capped mountains, seen from space. Photo Chinese Internet.
"Then Har answers: She is ring-shaped on the outside, and around her lies the deep sea, and along this lake shore they gave land for settlements to the giant race. But on the inner earth they made a castle around their home against the hostility of the giants, and for their castle they had the giant Ymir's eyebrows and called that castle Midgard."
The Tarim Basin in Xinjiang in western China is a good candidate for Midgard. It is surrounded by gigantic mountain ranges, as high as the Alps, and resembles a giant eye. One can travel from Kashgar, the western corner of the eye, eastward along the northern Tienshan Mountains, the northern branch of the Silk Road. Or one can travel eastward along the southern Kunlun Mountains, which are the southern branch of the Silk Road, and both lead to Dunhuang, the eastern corner of the eye. In the middle lies the scorching Taklamakhan Desert.
Even when one don't have the opportunity to see the country from space, one can easily imagine it looking like a giant eye, the enormous mountain ranges being the eyebrows, and the scorching desert in the middle being the eye itself.
The Tarim Basin in the heart of Asia, north of Tibet and south of Siberia. Photo Wikipedia Commons
No monsoon wind escapes the high mountains that surround the basin without first releasing its moisture in the form of snow on the mountains.
The area has a very dry continental climate with average temperatures from -20℃ in winter to 40℃ in summer. It never rains in Tarim and meltwater flowing down from the mountains is the only source of water. Therefore, all settlements and all agriculture are located along the foot of the mountains all the way around the edge of the desert.
The surrounding mountains receive snow equivalent to over 1000 mm. of rain per year. The rivers get their water exclusively from melted snow from the mountains, where the melting takes place in July, August and September.
All agriculture is based on irrigation, and has been so for as far back in history as anyone knows.
The Taklamakhan Desert is the largest, hottest and driest desert in China. Sand dunes cover about 85% of the Taklamakhan and often create massive dust storms. Isolated from the Asian monsoon and Arctic storms, the central Tarim receives less than 10 millimeters of precipitation per year.
A mummy from the Tarim Basin photographed by Aurel Stein around 1910.
The name Taklamakhan is said to mean "go in and you will not come out".
Many archaeological finds have been made hundreds of kilometers into the desert, which indicate that the green edge along the foot of the mountains was much wider in the past, when the Earth's temperature was higher and the monsoon winds were therefore stronger.
Contrary to popular belief, the Tarim Basin is a rich area, full of resources.
All the cotton for China's textile industry is grown in the Tarim region, wine and raisins and various fruits come from this area.
Beneath the burning desert lie valuable minerals such as gold, copper, rare earths, uranium and potash, as well as, not to forget, enormous reserves of oil and gas. According to Chinese geologists, the area's reserves represent almost 18 billion tons of crude oil, which is six times the known reserves of the United States.
3. Xiaohe Cemetery
The Xiaohe burial site consists of an artificial mound of sand. Beneath the sand near the top of the mound were nearly 200 poplar poles, up to four meters high, representing a considerable amount of timber for such a remote location in such a dry desert. The mummies were buried in boat-like coffins, wrapped in oxhide, a burial custom that differs markedly from other burial customs in Asia.
As a member of the Sino-Swedish Expedition of 1927-1935, led by Sven Hedin, the Swedish archaeologist Folke Bergman excavated the Xiaohe burial site. He examined 12 burials with mummified bodies. He secured 200 artifacts, which were sent to Sweden. The mummies were carefully reburied.
Fourth layer of the Xiaohe cemetery. The deceased were buried in coffins shaped like boats wrapped in oxhide.
The Xiaohe cemetery is located far out in the desert, about 160 kilometers west of the ruins of the city of Loulan, which was located on the shores of the long-dried salt lake, Lop Nor. The cemetery consists of an artificial mound of sand, which contained five layers of burials.
Photo: Chunxiang Li, Chao Ning, Erika Hagelberg, Hongjie Li, Yongbin Zhao, Wenying Li, Idelisi Abuduresule, Hong Zhu and Hui Zhou - "Analysis of ancient human mitochondrial DNA from the Xiaohe cemetery: insights into prehistoric population movements in the Tarim Basin, China" Wikipedia.
Folke Bergman wrote in his "Archaeological Researches in Sinkiang" (1939): "One cannot help but notice a general similarity between the dress of this Loulan people and that of the inhabitants of the Danish islands in the early Bronze Age, although there are of course no direct connections. These similarities are especially evident in the fringed loincloths, as regards their general features. The technique is quite different." He must have been thinking of the Egtved girl's corded skirt.
Both early and later archaeologists found it remarkable that the mummies have a "Western" physical appearance.
It was not until the turn of the millennium that the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology carried out the complete excavation of the Xiaohe burial site, where they found 167 tombs with mummified bodies in addition to the 12 that Folke Bergman had already examined. The archaeologists estimated that there had been 350 tombs, but many of them had been destroyed or eroded over time.
A two thousand year old felt hat from the Tarim Basin. Photo Chinese internet.
The American professor Victor Mair has translated the report of the Chinese archaeologists: "There were nearly 200 poles, each 4 meters high. Many had flat blades, painted black and red, like the oars of a great galley that had sunk under the sand waves." - "At the foot of each pole were actually boats, laid upside down and covered with cowhide. The bodies inside the boats were still wearing the clothes in which they had been buried. They wore felt hats with feathers inserted in the brim, eerily resembling Tyrolean mountain hats. They wore large woolen cloaks with tassels and leather boots." - "Inside each boat-coffin were grave goods, including beautifully woven grass baskets, skillfully carved masks and bundles of ephedra, an herb that may have been used in rituals or as medicine."
Ephedra has traditionally been used for a variety of medicinal purposes and is a possible candidate for the "soma" of Indo-Iranian religion.
In the many hymns, prayers and philosophies of the Vedas, a mystical plant called "soma" is mentioned with great reverence. Ritual consumption of "soma" is also mentioned in the ancient Zoroastrian text, the Avesta.
Archaeologists described finding in the women's coffins one or more life-size wooden phalluses placed on or next to the body.
They noted that each burial boat was marked by a pole up to four meters high, which at the top was shaped like either a phallus or a vulva. If the deceased was a man, the pole at the top was shaped like a vulva, and if the deceased was a woman, it was shaped like a phallus.
The Princess of Xiaohe was excavated by archaeologists from the Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology at the Xiaohe burial site 102 km west of Loulan in 2003. She has reddish-brown hair and long eyelashes, and was wrapped in a white woolen cloak with tassels, and wore a felt hat, a cord skirt, and fur-lined leather boots. She was buried with three small bags of ephedra, and twigs and branches of ephedra were placed next to her. Photo Martonkurucz Wikipedia.
"The entire burial site was covered in overt sexual symbolism," wrote Victor Mair. Which, in his opinion, reflected the "obsession with procreation" in the meaning that society was attached to it, namely fertility.
Elizabeth Barber, an expert in historical textiles, believes that the special diagonal weave pattern on the 4,000-year-old woolen clothes of the early mummies is remarkably reminiscent of the textiles of the ancient Celts.
Zhang et al analyzed proteins in plaque on the mummies' teeth, which revealed that they regularly ate foods made from cow's milk, wheat, and millet.
Anthropologist Han Kangxin has concluded that the earliest settlers of the Tarim Basin were not of modern Asian type. He believes that the skulls of the mummies very clearly indicate that they are of European or Caucasian origin.
The Xiaohe culture ceased around 1400 BC. Its disappearance remains unexplained.
4. The Cherchen mummies
The Cherchen mummies were discovered in 1978 at the village of Zaghunluq, near the town of Qiemo (Cherchen) in the eastern Tarim Basin a few hundred kilometers west of Dunhuang.
Chinese archaeologists recovered five mummies from the tomb at Cherchen, namely a man, three women, and an infant, all of whom died around 1000 BC.
The Cherchen man. His hair was reddish brown with gray flecks. He had high cheekbones and a long aquiline nose, full lips and a red beard. The yellow and purple spiral and sun patterns on the mummy's face have been mistakenly identified in some sources as tattoos, but they are painted on with ochre. Photo Mummipedia Wiki - Fandon.
The man, who is the most famous, is called the "Cherchen Man". His height is estimated to have been 176-178 cm. tall. He was dressed in trousers, a woolen tunic, a jacket and colorful leggings. He died when he was about 55 years old.
In a layer above the grave itself were the remains of a horse and a saddle, which must have belonged to the man.
Professor Victor Mair tells of the first time he saw the "Cherchen Man" at the museum in Ürümchi.
In a glass case so poorly lit that visitors had to use flashlights to see the contents, Mair caught sight of a bizarre sight. It was the stretched body of a man, just under 180 cm tall, dressed in an elegantly tailored woolen tunic and matching burgundy trousers. The man's legs were covered with striped leggings in shades of yellow, red and blue. But it wasn't so much the man's clothes that first caught Mair's attention. It was his face. It was narrow and light ivory, with high cheekbones, full lips, and a long nose. Locks of ginger hair and a graying beard framed parchment-like skin. He looked very Caucasian. In fact, he looked like someone Mair knew well. "He looked like my brother Dave, sleeping there, and that's what really caught my eye. I just kept looking at him, looking at his closed eyes. I couldn't tear myself away, and I walked around his glass case over and over and over again."
The most well-preserved of the women has been named the Cherchen woman. She was barely 180 cm tall and wore a red dress and white deerskin boots, her light brown hair arranged in two long braids. Photo Baomi Wikipedia.
Another woman, who shared the Cherchen Man's grave had light brown hair that had apparently been recently brushed and braided. Her face is painted with spiral patterns, and her striking red burial dress still gleams, even after three thousand years under the sand.
The Cherchen infant with blue stones placed on his eyes. Photo Michael Kan Flickr Wikipedia.
The third woman in the tomb was in the worst state of preservation.
The infant was wrapped in red wool and wore a cap of light blue felt with red wool edges. Next to the child was a nursing bottle made from a sheep's udder. It had two blue stones placed over its eyes. The child was about three months old when it was placed in the tomb.
A carbon-14 dating shows that all the inhabitants of the tomb lived around 1,000 BC, when there was a Bronze Age in Europe and China.
5. The beauty of Loulan
The Loulan Beauty is among the first mummies discovered in the Tarim Basin. She has been dated to around 1800 BC.
The Beauty of Loulan. The mummy was discovered on April 1, 1980, at the Tiebanhe burial site near Loulan by Chinese archaeologist Mu Shunying of the Institute of Archaeology of the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences. Unlike Egyptian mummies, which were preserved intentionally, the Tarim mummies were generally preserved unintentionally. The Loulan Beauty was buried near a salt lake in the desert, where the dry conditions preserved even the finer details of her face, such as her eyelashes. Photo Wikimedia Commons.
The mummy is wrapped in a wool blanket, oxhide and linen. She is wearing leather shoes. Both her clothes and her shoes are worn and have been repaired several times. Her hair was infested with lice.
She had a large amount of sand, dust and charcoal in her lungs, which may well have been the cause of her death. She was over forty years old when she died.
The special thing about the Beauty of Loulan is that she has been seized by the local Turkish Uyghurs, as proof of their right to the land in relation to China. They reason is that she is not a Chinese type and neither are they, which proves that they came to the land before the Chinese.
But they demonstrate their ignorance of their own history. The Chinese came to the Tarim Basin around the year 0 AD, after which more and more Chinese mummies begin to appear.
Around 700 AD the Uyghurs formed a kingdom in eastern Mongolia, from which they were, however, driven out by the Kyrgyz and Chinese in unison. Only then did the Uyghurs flood into the Tarim Basin, where they probably massacred the men and fathered their own children on the young women - as was also the custom later in history of Genghis Khan's armies consisting of Mongols and Turks.
6. Kjumbulak Kum
Some French and Chinese archaeologists have excavated a settlement in the Taklamakhan Desert. The site is now called "Kjumbulak Kum", and is located not far from ancient Khotan.
Left: A married couple from Kjumbulak Kum united in death.
Right: A man buried with his bow. Photo Youtube.
Left: A woman looks as if she is sleeping. She has been doing so for 3,000 years.
Right: A woman buried with folded arms and bent knees. Photo Youtube.
Kjumbulak Kum, as it looks today. It is far out in the Taklamakhan Desert. Photo Youtube.
The mummies found in the desert have hair and beards in shades of brown, which is also very common among modern Scandinavians and Northern Europeans.
7. Genetic origin
The report, "The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies", by Fan Zhang and his colleagues propose three working hypotheses regarding the origin of the ancient inhabitants of the Tarim Basin:
The first hypothesis is the "steppe hypothesis", which states that steppe nomads of Indo-European Afanasievo lineage found their way north of the Tien Shan Mountains and down through the Dzungarian Basin to the Tarim Basin.
The second hypothesis is the "oasis hypothesis", which states that oasis farmers from Bactria and Margiana in southern Central Asia (the Oxus culture) moved east to the Tarim Basin.
The third proposed hypothesis is the "Inner Asian Mountain Corridor hypothesis", which postulates that the Xiaohe culture arose from mobile agropastoral societies north of the Tianshan Mountains.
Three alternative hypotheses regarding the genetic origin of the people who lived in the Tarim Basin during the Bronze Age around 4,000 years ago.
Zhang et al. examined the complete genomes of 18 Bronze Age mummies from the Tarim Basin and the Dzungarian Basin to test three different hypotheses about the origin of these populations.
The "steppe hypothesis" states that the source population consisted of dairy nomads whose West Eurasian ancestors crossed the Eurasian steppe, moving south from the foothills of the Altai Mountains through the Dzungarian Basin to Tarim.
The "oasis hypothesis" states that farmers from the Bactrian Margiana region on the Oxus River crossed the Pamirs and utilized their knowledge of irrigation in the Tarim Basin.
The "Inner Asian Mountain Corridor hypothesis" states that the people of the Tarim Basin are descended from farmers from the Inner Asian mountains, who migrated across the Tien Shan Mountains and settled in the Tarim Basin. Own work.
To test these hypotheses, Zhang and his colleagues analyzed DNA from 13 mummies from 2100 BC from the Xiaohe burial site in the Tarim Basin and 5 individuals from 3000-2800 BC from the Dzungarian Basin.
Zhang et al retrieved ancient genome sequences from these 18 individuals and compared this information with data from existing ancient and modern DNA databases to place the studied individuals in the context of Eurasian population genetics.
However, to the researchers' great surprise, the mummies were not particularly genetically related to any of the groups described by the three hypotheses. Instead, they were genetically closely related to a previously identified genetic group called the "Ancient North Eurasians" (ANE), a once-widespread population of Ice Age hunter-gatherers who roamed the Eurasian Mammoth Plain during the Weichselian Ice Age maximum 10-24,000 years ago.
Therefore, it can be concluded to everyone's satisfaction that even though the Bronze Age people of the Tarim Basin looked exactly like Europeans, it is not at all the case that they came from Europe, descended from Europeans, or had any common ancestry with Europeans. They came from Siberia and were thus true Asians from the very beginning.
8. The Ancient North Eurasians
The mammoth hunters, who roamed the frozen plains of Siberia and northern Russia, not covered by ice sheets, during the last glacial maximum, are called ANE, meaning "Ancient North Eurasians." Only a few and flimsy traces of them have been found.
Researchers have speculated about what happened to them, but finding them in the Tarim Basin during the early Bronze Age is "completely unexpected," says Jeong, one of the project participants.
There has also been speculation about how the ancient Eurasians actually looked like. Did they resemble modern-day indigenous peoples of Siberia such as the Yukagir, Evenk, and Yakuts, with black hair and sometimes white skin, narrow eyes, and mongolian facial features? Did they resemble Eskimos, or did they look more Caucasian?
But since the Tarim Basin mummies represent their direct descendants, we have a better idea. They had white skin and light or reddish-brown hair with facial features very similar to European types.
A representative of the ANE, "ancient North Eurasians", Mal'ta boy, found near Lake Baikal, from 24,000 BC and associated grave goods exhibited at the Hermitage Museum Saint-Petersburg.
ANE means "Ancient North Eurasians". Photo eXploration Etoile Wikipedia.
The authors of the report "The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies" emphasize that "the ancient North Eurasians" were a completely isolated group around Lake Baikal in Siberia. But since only a few bones have been found of the hunters, who hunted on the Eurasian Mammoth Plain 10,000 - 40,000 BC, one cannot strictly say whether it was a unique isolated group or not.
Furthermore, "the ancient North Eurasians" with white skin, light and reddish-brown hair and European facial features - which the mummies prove according to the report "The genomic origins.." - contradicts the myth that certain Danish researchers have promoted that the Europeans' light skin, light hair colors and Caucasian facial features came from the south with the Indo-European immigration from Yamnaya in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, while the ancient hunters were dark, almost Negroid types.
But white skin, light hair and Caucasian facial features date back much further than the Yamnaya. For example, Finnish peoples have very light skin and hair, and they are not descended from the Yamnaya, as they are not Indo-European. But their ancestors endured the Ice Age as hunters and gatherers high in the north.
It is more likely that the human races, that endured the last Ice Age on the Mammoth Steppe for many thousands of years - as the "ancient North Eurasians" did - have light skin and light hair colors. While races, that survived the Weichel Ice Age far to the south on warm coasts, have black hair and various shades of brown or black skin.
But it is true that the Yamnaya most certainly had white skin and light hair colors, such as red, reddish brown, dark blond and blond - because they descended from the "ancient North Eurasians", as did the indigenous people of the Tarim Basin.
