Early Human Migrations -- The Mysterious Caucasions

[MidnightWizard]

OK let us present the setting ....

Taklamakan_Desert

A Host of Mummies, a Forest of Secrets

In the middle of a terrifying desert north of Tibet, Chinese archaeologists have excavated an extraordinary cemetery. Its inhabitants died almost 4,000 years ago, yet their bodies have been well preserved by the dry air.
The cemetery lies in what is now China’s northwest autonomous region of Xinjiang, yet the people have European features, with brown hair and long noses. Their remains, though lying in one of the world’s largest deserts, are buried in upside-down boats. And where tombstones might stand, declaring pious hope for some god’s mercy in the afterlife, their cemetery sports instead a vigorous forest of phallic symbols, signaling an intense interest in the pleasures or utility of procreation.

The long-vanished people have no name, because their origin and identity are still unknown. But many clues are now emerging about their ancestry, their way of life and even the language they spoke.

Their graveyard, known as Small River Cemetery No. 5, lies near a dried-up riverbed in the Tarim Basin, a region encircled by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the basin is occupied by the Taklimakan Desert, a wilderness so inhospitable that later travelers along the Silk Road would edge along its northern or southern borders.

Tarim Mummies

Mallory is the world's foremost non insane authority on the Indo Europeans. The Indo Europeans are the semi-mythical linguistic/ethnic group that spawned the languages and people that comprise essentially all of Europe as well as Sanskrit and it's derivatives and Iranian. The debate over these people's was badly tarnished by a century and a half of racist ideology (No one calls them the Aryans anymore, even though they called themselves Aryans.) Regardless of the historical baggage, it's an interesting area to read about. Mallory has written multiple books about the subject either by himself (In Search of Indo Europeans) or in conjunction with others (Oxford's Guide to Proto Indo European Linguistics.)

Secrets of the Silk Road

Secrets of the Silk Road explores the history of the Tarim Basin in western China. Extraordinarily well-preserved mummies and other materials found at the cross-roads of the legendary Silk Road suggest the area was active for thousands of years, with diverse languages, lifestyles, religions, and cultures present.

Prepare to uncover some of the secrets of the Silk Road.

Secrets of the Silk Road Exhibits

Secrets of the Silk Road explores the history of the vast desert landscape of the Tarim Basin, located in Western China, and the mystery of the peoples who lived there. Located at the crossroads between East and West, oasis towns within the Tarim Basin were key way stations for anyone traveling on the legendary Silk Road. Extraordinarily well-preserved human remains found at these sites reveal ancient people of unknown descent. Caucasian in appearance, these mummies challenge long-held beliefs about the history of the area, and early human migration. The material excavated suggests the area was active for thousands of years, with diverse languages, lifestyles, religions, and cultures present. This exhibition provides a chance to investigate this captivating material to begin to uncover some of the secrets of the Silk Road

Have a look at the artifacts and try and make up your OWN mind.

The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn’t Care to Listen To

The mummies show, though, that humans entered the region thousands of years earlier, and almost certainly from the west.

What is indisputable is that the Tarim mummies are among the greatest recent archaeological finds in China, perhaps the world.

Four are in glass display cases in the main museum here in Urumqi, the regional capital. Their skin is parched and blackened from the wear and tear of thousands of years, but their bodies are strikingly intact, preserved by the dry climate of the western desert.

Some foreign scholars say the Chinese government, eager to assert a narrative of longtime Chinese dominance of Xinjiang, is unwilling to face the fact that the mummies provide evidence of heterogeneity throughout the region’s history of human settlement.

As a result, they say, the government has been unwilling to give broad access to foreign scientists to conduct genetic tests on the mummies.

“In terms of advanced scientific research on the mummies, it’s just not happening,” said Victor H. Mair, a professor of Chinese language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania who has been at the forefront of foreign scholarship of the mummies.

Just to spoil you here is a nice image of the Taklamakan Desert, Central China

Town of Niya in Central China

I WONDER what Arthur Kemp will have to say

 

[ponder]

Shot, nice read. Always enjoyed those documentaries on tracing the migration of man over the ages using DNA markers and all this came out of the human genome project.

 

[murraybiscuit]

fascinating. i wish i could go back a few thousand years. and forward a few hundred (not so sure about the future)