Almost a thousand years before the East and West established any kind of communication, unknown tribes of people of the Caucasian race lived in the eastern regions of China. This is evidenced by amazing finds: well-preserved mummies with European features. Where did they come from in the very heart of Asian culture, because it is believed that Europe and Asia developed at this time independently of each other, without contact with each other? Unknown people did not leave any information about themselves, except for their own bodies.
Forgotten museum pieces
In 1988, American scientist Victor Mayer went to the provincial Chinese museum. He had no particular goal, the researcher of ancient Chinese texts just wanted to find something interesting to work with. But what he found amazed him and turned modern ideas about the history of China upside down.
Mummies lay in one of the halls of the museum. The bodies looked like people had recently died, but according to the museum, they were several thousand years old. Found in the late 1970s by a Chinese expedition in the Tarim Basin between the cities of Urumqi and Loulan, they remained unexplored. The most famous of them are the so-called Cherchensky man and Loulan beauty. Scientists had to solve a complex riddle - to find out where tall, fair-haired people appeared in the East Asian kingdom, so unlike the indigenous people of China. The mummies have survived much better than the Egyptian ones, thanks to the dry and hot climate of the Taklamakan Desert, where they were found. Mummification was also facilitated by the soil rich in salts, which kill microorganisms and prevent the body from smoldering. In addition, burials were made in the winter, in coffins without a lid and bottom,which helped to keep the mummies fresh. Well-preserved facial features, hair, clothing - all of this gave little clues to researchers.
The artifacts found next to the mummies suggested that this people had technologies that were then unknown in China: a wheel, bronze, woolen weaving. This meant that the tribes were not from China, but came from somewhere far away. But from where? Some hints of their origin are given by funeral dresses. These are very beautiful and expensive clothes, among which an easily recognizable twill weaving pattern was found - plaid cells! Similar things were found on excavations in Germany, Austria and Scandinavia, it is considered a purely European technique. Clothing allows us to draw conclusions about some of the features of the culture: bright, beautiful shrouds made of wool were made of very high quality, the bodies were laid neatly, which means that death and funeral rituals were treated with respect by this people. The jaws of the mummies were neatly tied, but the bandages loosened over time,and some faces acquired the expression "singing" or "shouting".
Loulan beauty
Victor Mayer believes that these people came to the Tarim Basin about 4000 years ago. Until that time, it was not inhabited due to the rather harsh climate, lack of sufficient water and food. This period includes the mummy of a woman who lived about 3,800 years ago and was found in the vicinity of the city of Loulan. This mummy is known all over the world as the Beauty of Loulan. She got this name thanks to her delicate facial features, large eyes, perfectly preserved long brown hair and thick eyelashes. Anthropologists tried to restore her appearance and created such a portrait that anyone will understand how beautiful this woman was during her lifetime.
A sieve and a bag with wheat grains were found nearby. Perhaps agriculture was the main occupation of women. A group of scientists led by Victor Mayer found that the Lou Lan beauty was a little over forty years old, the cause of her death was the cruel conditions of the desert, traces of smoke and sand were found in her lungs, and her body also testifies that the woman was literally eaten by lice. They buried her with all the honors, dressed in expensive and beautiful woolen clothes, combing her hair, applying makeup - on the face of the deceased, and after almost 4000 years, you can still find traces of makeup. The clothes on the mummy are very warm - another proof that she was buried in winter, thanks to which she was so well preserved.
The beauty from Loulan died, but her story did not end there. She got to our days to tell about her people.
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Cherchen man
The mummy of the Cherchensky man - a tall (almost two meters) man with fair skin and gray hair, got its name from the name of the city in the vicinity of which it was found. This mummy is considered the best preserved in the world, it seems that decay did not touch the body, only time dried it up.
Cherchensky man lived about 3000 thousand years ago. At the time of his death, he was about 50 years old. Like other mummies, the man does not look like the indigenous people of China: tall, fair-skinned, with light blond hair, he wore colorful robes and, today, the world's oldest pants. His face was covered in tattoos. Archaeologists suggested that the Cherchensky man was the leader of his tribe, because 10 different headdresses, a saddle, a horse's skull and hooves were buried next to him. These findings provide one more clue to the clue, they say that people have already traveled on horseback, which means they could travel long distances to contact other peoples, including the Chinese.
Near the Cherchensky man, three women were found, also tall (about 180 centimeters), buried in clothes of the same color as the man. Their hair is braided in braids, their heads are adorned with intricate headdresses.
And the saddest find is the mummy of a three-month-old child, wrapped in a beautiful woolen shroud. The baby lies on a sheep's pillow, blue stones are laid over his eyes, and next to it is an ancient "bottle" made of an animal's horn with a teat made of a sheep's udder. It feels like a lot of tears have been shed over this little body. Like the bodies of adults, it was prepared for burial very carefully and with great love; traces of oil were found on the skin, with which the child was rubbed before burial.
During the work in the Taklamakan desert, more than 300 mummies were found, many of them indicated the age of death up to 45 years, about 40 mummies of children. Unfortunately, the conditions of the desert, which allowed the bodies to survive so well after death, threatened these people during life.
Origin mystery
The researchers were faced with an important task - to determine where the Caucasians came from in Asia. A painstaking work was carried out to study the artifacts found in the graves, comparison with similar finds made in other parts of the world.
Much similarity was revealed between the Chinese mummies and the Pazyryk culture that existed in Western Siberia. The mummy of the Pazyryk man, now kept in the Emitage, has similar features to the people from the Tarim basin. Similar woolen fabrics with a Celtic pattern, clothing models, and household items are found in Europe. DNA analysis of the mummies showed that not purely European or Asian blood flowed in their veins. They covered a long distance before reaching the desert, and along the way they actively interacted with other tribes.
This is how the theory of the migration of peoples to the Tarim Basin around 2500 BC arose. These peoples brought with them various elements of civilization: a spoked wheel, bronze, thereby having a great influence on the Mongoloid tribes. The theory has many confirmations: in the Chinese language, the words denoting a horse, cow, cart clearly contain Indo-European roots. In addition, in local folklore, there are legends about blue-eyed fair-haired people who were the first rulers of the Celestial Empire (In the Buddhist monastery in Bezeklik, in the northeast of Taklamakan, there are images of blue-eyed monks).
Until the burials were discovered in 1977, Chinese culture was thought to be unique and autonomous. However, these findings cast doubt on the well-known historical facts - the mummies were found next to the ruins, which indicate that there was a whole city built by white people, and these ruins go along the Great Silk Road. It turns out that it was the strangers who built the Great Silk Road, and not the Chinese at all, as previously thought.
In the late 1990s, Chinese authorities banned excavations in the Tarim Basin and any research on mummies already found. Some of the finds remained in the museum, and some were reburied. Perhaps the reason for this was fears that further work would prove that it was not the Chinese who discovered iron, invented the saddle and domesticated the horse, all this was already created long before them by white people.
Magazine: Secrets of the 20th century №13. Author: Irina Stepkina