Ancient European Remains Discovered In Qinghai (China)

Xinhuanet/China View ^ | 7-6-2004

[blam]

Ancient European remains discovered in Qinghai

www.chinaview.cn 2004-07-06 15:32:53

XINING, July 6 (Xinhuanet) -- Archeologists confirmed that the human skeletons discovered this May in northwest China's Qinghai Province belonged to three Europeans who lived in China over 1,900 years ago.

"The physical characteristics of the bones showed it is a typical European race," said Wang Minghui, an expert with the archeological institute under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The skeletons were spotted at Zhongchuan Town of the province's eastern most Minhe Hui and Tu Autonomous County.

Since 2002, archeologists have unearthed nine tombs of Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) at a construction site of a brickfield in the town, but it was not until this May that they felt the skeletons in two tombs "very special", said Ren Xiaoyan, deputy director if the provincial archeological institute, who added they invited Wang, who specializes in human bone identification, to take part in the study on the findings.

Qinghai is on the southern section of the world-known land trade corridor -- the Silk Road, linking China with Central and Western Asia and to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean begins in the country's northwest and runs 7,000 kilometers.

Serving as an important bridge for the economic and cultural exchanges between the East and the West, the area, which the Silk Road covered in China, used to see throngs of Indian, Persian, Arabic, Greek and Roman people.

Ren said the tomb shape, the burial articles and the way they were put in the tomb are all typical in Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220), which proved the three westerners had lived here for a long time and were accustomed to local traditions and customs.

"Although so far, we have been not sure of the country the three Europeans came from and there might be a large number of such 'westerners' living here at the ancient time," said Ren.

Such European skeletons have only been revealed in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a neighboring region which is to the northwest of Qinghai, so the discovery this time is of great importance for the study of the ancient society in Qinghai, said Wang. Enditem

[SunkenCiv]

Rethinking a History That's Carved in Stone
by John Noble Wilford
July 31, 2001

Three months after the announcement of its discovery in Central Asia, a tiny stone object inscribed with symbols thought to be the writing of an obscure desert culture from 4,000 years ago is more of an enigma than ever. If this is indeed an early form of writing, as its discoverer has suggested, it is strong evidence for a previously unknown civilization that began about 2300 B.C. across much of modern Turkmenistan and parts of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan... An even more puzzling aspect of the discovery has been raised by specialists in ancient Chinese writing. They contend that the inscription bears more than a passing resemblance to Chinese writing -- not an early script, but one that was not used until about 200 B.C... There is no clear evidence for Chinese writing before about 1300 or 1200 B.C. -- 1,000 years after people lived at the Anau site in Turkmenistan where the mysterious inscription was unearthed... Another possibility, which would throw the scholarship of Chinese writing into turmoil, is that the 2300 inscription date is correct. That would suggest that influences from Central Asia or farther west might have contributed to the invention of Chinese writing. Dr. Mair, who holds that such influences were greater than previously thought, has raised this controversial point.

That's consistent with an older view, that of diffusion of discoveries (writing, the plow, the stirrup, the abacus, gunpowder, what-have-you) from point of origin (wherever each one originated) outward to the rest of the world.

Origins of the Bronze Age Oasis Civilization in Central Asia by Fredrik T. Hiebert

[blam]

The oldest paper ever found was among these mummies around Urumchi. The extinct Indo-European language, Tocharian, was written on it. Ancient Celtic is it's closest relative.

[Marie]

My mom wants the rest of the article! I was reading it to her over the phone and the link just left us hangin'!

[Cronos]

Personally, I wouldn't call anything from 1900 years ago, ANCIENT. Mentally I classify anything pre-Christ as ancient, post-Christ as well, not ancient ;-)

[Cronos]

As their arms were posed in the traditional "hands up" position, experts have concluded that these were most likely French fleeing from some unknown ancient enemy.

Sheesh, I don't like the way the French GOVERNMENT is acting now, but there's no need to distort history -- the French did nearly manage to conquer all of Europe under Napoleon and they were a first rate power by the 1400s while England was a second rate power until the later Stuarts. In any case, "France" only really started around 800~900 AD when Frankreich became gallic

[Cronos]

In any case, Indians had a pretty highly developed civilisation by 2500 + B.C. and these were the eastern outpost of "westerners" viz. caucasians, so it's not really surprising that some caucasians were found near the indian continent around 100 AD

[dfwgator]

So even then they had "running dogs of western imperialism" in China.

[Cronos]

Have we found any graves of Asian travellers of the period in the West

"Asian" is a vague term. You mean Oriental. Well, after the Chinese were converted to Buddhism by Indian missionaries sent by the Indian Emperor Asoka, Hsuien -Tsang (?) a Chinese traveller did travel to the lands west of the Gobi desert. We're not sure how far west he went though -- probably up to Parthia, maybe further. However, prior to this there was trade from China as early as Phoenician times (and THAT is ancient!)

[Cronos]

Are there any records of Chinese travellers in Rome or elsewhere in the Mediterranean during ancient times? I would be surprised if there are not, but I don't know the field.

I don't know of any. China mostly considered itself as the Middle Kingdom and allowed traders from IT's west to trade with china -- so these nomadic westerners would have traded with China and then traded with the Parthians or Arabs who would have traded with the Romans.

[Cronos]

Comment. Fringe anthropology notes many "white" races in strange places; viz., the white Indians of Panama and the Mandans of the American West.

The term "white" is silly -- if they mean Caucasian, they should use that term. If you go by the coloring only, then races do blur -- extremely pale Japanese for example, while Caucasian Iranians and Indians are much darker, as are some Italians and Greeks and Semitic peoples

[Cronos]

A form of Christianity did reach China after sweeping through Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, and Afghanistan. It was popular until Islam.

Nestorian/Syrian. The Syrian-Chaldean church was very very big in what is now Iraq and Iran and Syria until the advent of the moon cult

[Cronos]

Wasn't it contained in a report of the Lewis & Clark expedition that some members of the expedition communicated with the Mandans in Welsh? Also, I've read much speculation that the Mandans may be the remnants of the Prince Madoc (Welsh) group that came to the US in 1170AD...Lately I've read 540AD.

Well, those Welsh stories have been discounted -- they were made up by the British to try and claim that they had a legal claim over the Americas

[Cronos]

"That whole Xinjiang Uygur Autonomus Region is covered with Caucasian skeletons and mummies that date to 2,000BC. The Chinese skeletons and mummies do not start to show up in that region until about 100BC."

To put it bluntly, Xinjiang is not really part of China and neither is Tibet -- China ends at the Gobi desert -- the natural range that kept the Mongoloid race separate from the Caucasian race -- just as the Sahara separated the Caucasians from the Afroids.

Xinjiang belongs to Central Asia, a place where Iranic and Indic tribes were known to have roamed for millennia. Then, around the time of Christ, these were pushed westwards by the Turkic-Mongoloid peoples, as best demonstrated in Afghanistan-Iran:

In Afghanistan, the Turkic peoples moved quickly westwards and separated the Irani speaking Tajiks from Iran. Then, the Mongols came and moved directly south and became the Hazara tribes now found in central Afghanistan, some of which moved further south and formed the Moghul (Mongol) dynasty in India. The Turkic peoples meanwhile moved west to Anatolia.

[Cronos]

In Africa.

Are you sure? I've not heard of any Chinese presence in Afrika prior to the Ming (?) dynasty which sent a fleet around the 1400s to the Indian Ocean. that was the peak of Chinese civilisation and naval power

[Cronos]

For those who came late (gotta love Phantom!), here's a list of the Aryan family of languages:

Subfamily	Group	Subgroup	Languages and Principal Dialects
Anatolian			Hieroglypic Hittite*, Hittite (Kanesian)*, Luwian*, Lycian*, Lydian*, Palaic*
Baltic			Latvian (Lettish), Lithuanian, Old Prussian*
Celtic	Brythonic		Breton, Cornish*, Welsh
Celtic	Continental		Gaulish*
Celtic	Goidelic or Gaelic		Irish (Irish Gaelic), Manx*, Scottish Gaelic
Germanic	East Germanic		Burgundian*, Gothic*, Vandalic*
Germanic	North Germanic		Old Norse* (see Norse): Danish, Faeroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish
Germanic	West Germanic (see Grimm's law)	High German	German, Yiddish
Germanic	West Germanic (see Grimm's law)	Low German	Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Flemish, Frisian, Plattdeutsch (see German language)
Greek			Aeolic*, Arcadian*, Attic*, Byzantine Greek*, Cyprian*, Doric*, Ionic*, KoinE*, Modern Greek
Indo-Iranian	Dardic or Pisacha		Kafiri, Kashmiri, Khowar, Kohistani, Romany (Gypsy), Shina
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan		Pali*, Prakrit*, Sanskrit*, Vedic*
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	Central Indic	Hindi, Hindustani, Urdu
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	East Indic	Assamese, Bengali, Bihari, Oriya
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	Northwest Indic	Punjabi, Sindhi
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	Pahari	Central Pahari, Eastern Pahari (Nepali), Western Pahari
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	South Indic	Marathi (including major dialect Konkani), Singhalese (Sinhalese)
Indo-Iranian	Indic or Indo-Aryan	West Indic	Bhili, Gujarati, Rajasthani (many dialects)
Indo-Iranian	Iranian		Avestan*, Old Persian*
Indo-Iranian	Iranian	East Iranian	Baluchi, Khwarazmian*, Ossetic, Pamir dialects, Pushtu (Afghan), Saka (Khotanese)*, Sogdian*, Yaghnobi
Indo-Iranian	Iranian	West Iranian	Kurdish, Pahlavi (Middle Persian)*, Parthian*, Persian (Farsi), Tajiki
Italic	(Non-Romance)		Faliscan*, Latin, Oscan*, Umbrian*
Italic	Romance or Romanic	Eastern Romance	Italian, Rhaeto-Romanic, Romanian, Sardinian
Italic	Romance or Romanic	Western Romance	Catalan, French, Ladino, Portuguese, Provençal, Spanish
Slavic or Slavonic	East Slavic		Belorussian (White Russian), Russian, Ukrainian
Slavic or Slavonic	South Slavic		Bulgarian, Church Slavonic*, Macedonian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian
Slavic or Slavonic	West Slavic		Czech, Kashubian, Lusatian (Sorbian or Wendish), Polabian*, Polish, Slovak
Thraco-Illyrian			Albanian, Illyrian*, Thracian*
Thraco-Phrygian			Armenian, Grabar (Classical Armenian)*, Phrygian*
Tokharian (W China)			Tokharian A (Agnean)*, Tokharian B (Kuchean)*

[wardaddy]

i knew it was you when i saw the header.

[Cronos]

The ones marked with an (*) are extinct languages

[wardaddy]

and worse yet, they have the audacity to use the term "race"....oh the horror!

[Cronos]

The term "race" is perfectly acceptable in a scientific discussion to distinguish between large groups of people -- it may blur at the edges but is a pretty good identifier

[wardaddy]

i agree (with both parts) but i'll bet you that even a sizable number of freepers bristle at the word.

I saw you mentioned Indians earlier. Like you I generally lumped them into the Caucazoid group but I was corrected the other day here by someone who informed me (with links) that most Indians (particularly lower caste) were indeed Australiod/Negroid unlike Pakistanis who were more Caucazoid.

interesting