Tarim mummies are an incomprehensible mystery of the ancient world and one of the most important archaeological finds of the 20th century. These surprisingly well-preserved human remains have been discovered in the arid salt sands of the Taklamakan Desert, which is part of the Tarim Basin in western China.
The bodies found in those distant parts were dated by a long period of time: 1800 BC. e. - 400 AD e. However, most of all scientists were struck by the fact that the mummies had features of the Caucasian race. Apparently, there were tribes in Western China that mysteriously disappeared 2,000 years ago.
The discoverer of mummies was the Swedish scientist Sven Hedin at the beginning of the 20th century. studied the general history of the Silk Road - a network of ancient roads that once led from China to Turkey and further to Europe. The bodies were taken to European museums for further study, but the lack of the necessary equipment and funding became the reason that they were soon forgotten.
In 1978, the Chinese archaeologist Weng Binghua discovered 113 mummified bodies in the Kizilchok burial ground, or Red Hill, in the northeastern part of the central Asian province of Xinyang. Later, most of the bodies were transported to the museum of the city of Urumki. Over the past 25 years, Chinese and Central Asian archaeologists have excavated and carried out extensive research in the area, discovering more than 300 mummies.
In 1987, Professor of Chinese and Indo-Iranian Literature and Religion at the University of Pennsylvania Victor Mayr led a group of tourists through the Urumki Museum and, approaching the mummies found by Weng Binghua, was surprised to find that they were all dressed in dark purple woolen clothes and felt shoes and showed signs of Caucasoid: brown or blond hair, elongated noses and skulls, slender bodies and large deep-set eyes.
The political situation in China at that time did not allow Mayr to study these amazing finds, and in 1993 he returned with a group of Italian geneticists working on the study of the "ice man." Scientists traveled to Red Hill, where Weng Binghua was excavating, to exhume the mummies reburied due to lack of space in the Urumq Museum. Analysis of DNA samples confirmed that they were Caucasian mummies, after which Mayr stated that most likely the oldest mummies were representatives of the first white settlers in the Tarim River basin.
The oldest mummy found in Western China was nicknamed the Loulan Beauty: this well-preserved body was found by Chinese archaeologists in 1980 near the ancient city of Loulan, in the northeastern part of the Taklamakan Desert. A 5'2 ” woman who died at the age of 40 about 4,800 years ago, had Caucasian features (including a prominent bridge of the nose, high cheekbones, light brown hair that was gathered and hidden under a felt headdress) …
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The body was wrapped in a woolen shroud, leather boots on its feet, and next to it in the tomb lay a comb and an elegant straw basket with grains of wheat. The next expedition to the Loulan region, organized in 2003 by the Archaeological Institute of Xinyang Province. allowed to make a number of new important discoveries. Excavations were carried out 110 feet from the ancient city of Loulan, in a burial ground that was a 25-foot-high mound of sand. Not far from the center of the mound, a rather interesting find was discovered - another amazing female mummy.
She lay in a coffin shaped like a boat, wrapped in a woolen blanket, with a felt hat on her head and leather shoes on her feet. Next to the body were: a red-painted face mask, a jade stone bracelet, a leather bag, a woolen loincloth and ephedra sticks. Ephedra is a medicinal plant, a shrub, used by the people of Iran in Zoroastrian rituals. Consequently, there may have been some connection between these regions.
Later, in the Tarim River basin, they managed to find another group of mummies - the bodies of a man, three women and a child - called the Cherchen mummies. The four adult bodies date back to 1000 BC. e. Their clothes were in the same colors, and red or blue cords were tied around their heads, which seemed to indicate a close relationship. The man from the burial, or the Cherchen man, more than 6 feet tall, died at the age of 50. He had long, light brown, braided hair, a thin beard and many tattoos on his face.
He was wearing a purple-red robe, and there were at least 10 headdresses of various styles nearby. Like the Cherchen man, one of the female mummies had many tattoos on the face. The 6-foot woman with light brown hair braided in two long braids wore a red dress and white deerskin boots.
A three-month-old child with a blue felt cap on his head, whose eyes were covered with blue stones, was buried with the adults. Near the infant's body was a bowl made of cow horn and a feeding bottle made from the udder of a sheep. Presumably, the family died from some kind of epidemic.
Most of all in these finds, archaeologists were struck by the amazing preservation, brightness of colors and the European type of clothing on these people. Professor of Linguistics and Archeology at Western College Los Angeles, Dr. Elizabeth Barber, did a detailed study of textiles found in the Tarim Basin and found striking similarities to the Celtic tartan used in northwestern Europe. The researcher put forward a version that the material found in the graves of Tarim mummies and European tartan have a common origin. According to existing evidence, it appeared in the Caucasus Mountains at least 5,000 years ago.
Among the numerous garments from 15 Chinese mummy graves were found: robes, hats, skirts, raincoats, tartan trousers and striped wool stockings. Three female mummies dating from 500-400 BC were found in the Subishi burial ground located in the northern part of the Silk Road. BC e., in very high speckled hats, for which they were called witches from Subishi.
Who were these Europeans and what were they doing in China? The area of the finds is so wide, and their dating covers such a long period of time that there can be no question of the existence of one tribe. They appear to be representatives of several groups of migrations that have moved eastward from various territories for a thousand years or more.
In some sources, there are references to the inhabitants of the Tarim River basin (the territory where the mummies were found), which can become a clue to the origin of at least some of the mummies. In Chinese sources of the 1st millennium BC. e. refers to a group of "white people with long hair" called bai. They lived on the northwestern borders of China, and the Chinese apparently bought jade from them.
It is known that Yuezhi lived on this territory, about whom in 645 BC. e. mentions the Chinese author Guan Zhong. Yuezhi supplied the Chinese with jade, which they mined in the nearby mountains of Yuzhi (Gansu province). After the devastating raids of the nomadic tribes of the Huns, most of the Yuezhi moved to Transoxiana (part of Central Asia, covering the lands of modern Uzbekistan and southwestern Kazakhstan), and later to northern India, where the Kushan Empire was created. Portraits of the Yuezhi kings on coins prompted some researchers to think that these could be people of the Caucasian type.
Another nationality that inhabited these lands were the Tochars - Western tribes speaking Indo-European languages (a language group that includes most of the European, Indian and Iranian languages). Some scholars believe that the Yuezhi and Tochars are, in essence, the same tribes, called differently.
However, to date, this version has not been confirmed by facts. The territory in the west of China where the Caucasian mummies were found, namely the northeastern part of the Tarim River basin and the lands to the east of it near Lake Lop Nor, correspond to the distribution area of the Tocharian languages in the future. Chinese sources say that the Tochars had blond or red hair and blue eyes, and on the frescoes of the 9th century. in the Buddhist caves located in the Tarim river basin, people with pronounced features of the Caucasian race are depicted.
It is known that the Tochars, after the attack of the Huns, did not leave the Tarim River basin, and later borrowed Buddhism from the population of North India. The Tocharian culture existed at least until the 8th century, when they assimilated with the Turkic Uyghur tribes who came from the eastern Asian steppes.
Although Tocharian texts have never been found with mummies in the Tarim River basin, one place of residence and Tocharian drawings depicting people of the Caucasian race indicate with a high degree of probability that at least some of the mummified inhabitants of this region were ancestors of the Tochars.
Have all these people crossed Europe and half of Asia in order to settle in the waterless desert in western China? Judging by the remains of textiles, the origin of which is associated with the Caucasian tartan from the south of Russia, and linguistic data, which indicate that Indo-European languages originate in the same region, migrations began from the region of the Caucasus Mountains in ancient times.
Dr. Elizabeth Barber hypothesized about two waves of migration that began on the northwestern coast of the Black Sea - the supposed ancestral home of the Indo-European population. The first migration was Western, which resulted in the emergence of Celtic and other European civilizations. Another migration is associated with the ancestors of the Tochars, who moved eastward to Central Asia and settled in the Tarim River basin. Thus, Tarim mummified finds cast doubt on the theory of the isolated development of Western and Eastern civilization.
B. Houghton