Chinese and American archaeologists have investigated burials dating back more than 4 thousand years. The people buried in them have practically nothing in common with either the Chinese or the modern inhabitants of Tibet
"The Beauty of Signohe". She is over 3800 years old, so for such a venerable age, the preservation should be considered ideal.
Ancient burials, even of such a venerable age, are not so rare in themselves. The Egyptian pyramids are half a millennium older, the very first human burials are found at the sites of the Neanderthals, who generally belong to another biological branch of Homo sapiens, which became extinct even before the last ice age.
The interest of scientists was not caused by the time of burial, but by a number of strange features, which have not yet been fully explained.
They are strangers
This is what the Tarim Basin looks like from space. Sand, stones, dust and mountains - however, the area was more hospitable several millennia ago.
The burial is located in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This is the northern part of Tibet, the least populated and the most severe region in terms of natural conditions in China.
Despite the presence of rivers, most of the land here is a desert with few oases, recently discovered oil deposits and burials that were discovered at the beginning of the last century.
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From a distance it may seem that the picture shows an old woman wrapped in some kind of fabric. But in fact, by the time of the photo in 1910, this woman had been dead for over thirty-five centuries and survived only because of the dry and cold climate of the highlands.
The burials, recently investigated by the New York Times, contain mummies of people who are not Mongoloid in appearance. Their bodies lie in upside-down boats, and pointed phallic symbols above their graves. Where did the fair-haired, tall, people with no Asian features come from, and where did they go?
Now in the Xinjiang Uygur region live Uyghurs, Chinese, Kazakhs, Mongols and several dozen other nationalities, among which there are practically no Europeans, except for a small Russian community. Since Sino-Uyghur clashes occur here regularly, not only scientists are discussing the origin of mummies. Local nationalists from various ethnic communities were not averse to declaring the mummies of "Aryan" appearance as their ancestors.
As often happens, genetics upset the ideologists. Genetic analysis (it was possible to obtain well-preserved DNA molecules from the mummies) showed that the ancient inhabitants of Northern Tibet carried the characteristics of both Europeans and Siberians. True, a study recently published in the journal BMC Biology did not solve all the mysteries.
From Tibet to Norway? Or vice versa?
In an interview with the New York Times, Victor Mayer, a history specialist for the Tarim Basin of Northern Tibet at the University of Pennsylvania, noted several interesting features in burials excavated between 2003 and 2005.
Tablet with text in Tocharian language. It dates back to the V-VIII centuries, which is already very far from the burials studied by archaeologists. But, apparently, it was the Tochars who were the descendants of people buried under overturned boats in the Tarim Basin.
Some of the items found by scientists resemble finds made earlier, but not in Tibet, but in Europe. Mayer does not exclude a connection with the Viking burial customs, and this assumption is far from being as unfounded as it might seem when looking at the map. The Tokhars, a people who lived in the northern part of Tibet much later than the time of the burial, spoke the language of the Indo-European group, and, according to one of the hypotheses, came from Eastern Europe.
And at the beginning of the new era, some peoples, for example the Huns, came from the territory of modern Mongolia and China to Europe, therefore, there is nothing supernatural in the possibility of cultural contact of the Viking ancestors with the descendants of the mysterious inhabitants of Northern Tibet.
Until the death tear us apart
The pillars about 3.5 m high above the graves are, according to archaeologists, phallic symbols. For a tribe that lived in isolation in a region with a harsh climate, sexuality was closely associated with survival, and a three-meter phallus could well be a symbol of fertility.
It is noteworthy that the tops of the pillars were grinded to give them a phallic shape only over the graves of women. Over the places where the men were buried, there were pillars, the upper part of which was hewn out like an oar, which can also be interpreted in a sexual way. From the point of view of Myers and a number of his colleagues, this vaginal symbol is another sign of fertility and renewal of life. And the fact that some female burials were marked with additional gifts could be due to the fact that the deceased women gave birth to and raised more children. Where people are constantly threatened by population decline, such signs of attention are quite understandable, scientists believe.
