Tocharians

The Tocharians were the easternmost speakers of an Indo-European language in antiquity, inhabiting the Tarim basin in what is now Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, northwestern People's Republic of China. Their unique culture spanned from the 1st millennium BCE to the end of the 1st millennium CE. Their language is called Tocharian.

The Tarim mummies suggest that precursors of these easternmost speakers of an Indo-European language may have lived in the region of the Tarim Basin from around 1800 BCE until finally they were assimilated by Uyghur Turks in the 9th century CE.

"Tocharian donors", possibly the "Knights with Long Swords" of Chinese accounts, depicted with light hair and light eye color and dressed in Sassanian style. 6th century CE fresco, Qizil, Tarim Basin. Graphical analysis reveals that the third donor from left is performing a Buddhist vitarka mudra. These frescoes are associated with annotations in Tocharian and Sanskrit made by their painters.There is evidence both from the mummies and Chinese writings that many of them had blonde or red hair and blue eyes, characteristics also found in present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Central Asia, due to the populations' high genetic diversity. This suggests the possibility that they were part of an early migration of speakers of Indo-European languages that ended in what is now the Tarim Basin in western China. According to a controversial theory, early invasions by Turkic speakers may have pushed Tocharian speakers out of the Tarim Basin and into modern Afghanistan, India, Turkmenistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan."

The Tarim Basin mummies (1800 BCE) and the Tocharian texts and frescoes from the Tarim Basin (800 CE) have been found in the same general geographical area, and are both connected to an Indo-European origin. The faces on these frescos were usually vandalized in the past due to their "European" features. The mummies and the frescoes both point to Caucasian types with light eyes and hair color. There is no evidence that directly connects them however, as no texts were recovered from the grave sites.

A recent article (Hemphill and Mallory, 2004) reaches the following conclusions:

This study confirms the assertion of Han [1998] that the occupants of Alwighul and Krorän are not derived from proto-European steppe populations, but share closest affinities with Eastern Mediterranean populations. Further, the results demonstrate that such Eastern Mediterraneans may also be found at the urban centers of the Oxus civilization located in the north Bactrian oasis to the west. Affinities are especially close between Krorän, the latest of the Xinjiang samples, and Sapalli, the earliest of the Bactrian samples, while Alwighul and later samples from Bactria exhibit more distant phenetic affinities. This pattern may reflect a possible major shift in interregional contacts in Central Asia in the early centuries of the second millennium BC. However, another theory states that the earliest Bronze Age settlers of the Tarim and Turpan basins originated from the steppelands and highlands immediately north of East Central Asia. These colonists were related to the Afanasievo culture which exploited both open steppelands and upland environments employing a mixed agricultural economy. The Afanasievo culture formed the eastern linguistic periphery of the Indo-European continuum of languages whose centre of expansion lay much farther to the west, north of the Black and Caspian seas. This periphery was ancestral to the historical Tocharian languages. See J. P. Mallory and Victor H. Mair, The Tarim Mummies — 2000 Thames and Hudson Ltd ISBN 0-500-05101-1.

Textile analysis has shown some similarities to the Iron Age civilizations of Europe dating from 800BC, including woven twill and tartan patterns strikingly similar to Celtic tartans from Northwest Europe. One of the unusual finds with one of the mummies was a classical pointy hat, worn by some European cultures in Ancient and Medieval times, suggesting very ancient Indo-European roots for this tradition. The female mummies also wore the same kind of skirts as have been found preserved in graves from the Nordic Bronze Age.

Wooden plate with inscriptions in the Tocharian language. Kucha, China, 5th-8th century. Tokyo National Museum.

The Tocharians appear to have originally spoken two distinct languages of the Indo-European Tocharian family, an Eastern ("A") form and a Western ("B") form. According to some, only the Eastern ("A") form can be properly called "Tocharian", as the native name for the Western form is referred to as Kuchean (see below). Commonalities between the Tocharian languages and various other Indo-European language families (as with Germanic, Balto-Slavic, even Italic or Greek) have been suggested, but the evidence does not support any close relationship with any other family. The only consensus is that Tocharian was already far enough removed, at an early date, from the other eastern I-E proto-languages (Proto-Balto-Slavic and Proto-Indo-Iranian), not to share some of the common changes that PBS and PII share, such as early palatalization of velars.

Tocharian A of the eastern regions seems to have declined in use as a popular language or mother tongue faster than did Tocharian B of the west. Tocharian A speakers probably yielded their original language to Turkic languages of immigrating Turkic peoples, while Tocharian B speakers were more insulated from outside linguistic influences. It appears that Tocharian A ultimately became a liturgical language, no longer a living one, at the same time that Tocharian B was still widely spoken in daily life. Among the monasteries of the lands inhabited by Tocharian B speakers, Tocharian A seems to have been used in ritual alongside the Tocharian B of daily life.

Besides the religious Tocharian texts, the texts include monastery correspondence and accounts, commercial documents, caravan permits, medical and magical texts, and a love poem. Their manuscript fragments, of the 8th centuries, suggest that they were no longer either as nomadic or "barbaric" as the Chinese had considered them.

Blue-eyed Central Asian (Tocharian?) and East-Asian Buddhist monks, Bezaklik, Eastern Tarim Basin, 9th-10th century.

The Tocharians, living along the Silk Road, had contacts with the Chinese and Persians, and Turkic, Indian and Iranian tribes. They might be the same as, or were related to, the Indo-European Yuezhi who fled from their settlements in Gansu under attacks from the Xiongnu in the 2nd century BCE (Shiji Chinese historical Chronicles, Chap. 123) and expanded south to Bactria and northern India to form the Kushan Empire.

The Tocharians who remained in the Tarim Bassin adopted Buddhism, which, like their alphabet, came from northern India in the first century of the 1st millennium, through the proselytism of Kushan monks. The Kushans and the Tocharians seem to have played a part in the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism to China. Many apparently also practised some variant of Manichaeanism.

Protected by the Taklamakan desert from steppe nomads, the Tocharian culture survived past the 7th century. The Kingdom of Khotan was one of the centers of this ancient civilization.

The term Tocharians has a somewhat complicated history. It is based on the ethnonym Tokharoi (Greek Τόχαροι) used by Greek historians (e.g. Ptolemy VI, 11, 6). The first mention of the Tocharians appeared in the 1st century BCE, when Strabo presented them as a Scythian tribe, and explained that the Tokharians — together with the Assianis, Passianis and Sakaraulis — took part in the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in the second half of the 2nd century BCE:

"Most of the Scythians, beginning from the Caspian Sea, are called Dahae Scythae, and those situated more towards the east Massagetae and Sacae; the rest have the common appellation of Scythians, but each separate tribe has its peculiar name. All, or the greatest part of them, are nomads. The best known tribes are those who deprived the Greeks of Bactriana, the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacarauli, who came from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes, opposite the Sacae and Sogdiani." (Strabo, 11-8-1) These Tochari are identified with the Yuezhi and one of their major tribes, the Kushans. The geographical term Tokharistan usually refers to 1st millennium Bactria (Chinese Daxia 大夏).

Today, the term is associated with the Indo-European languages known as "Tocharian". Based on a Turkic reference to Tocharian A as twqry, these languages were associated with the Kushan ruling class, but the exact relation of the speakers of these languages and the Kushan Tokharoi is uncertain, and some consider "Tocharian languages" a misnomer. Tocharian A is also known as East Tocharian, or Turfanian (of the city of Turfan), and Tocharian B is also known as West Tocharian, or Kuchean (of the city of Kucha)

The term is so widely used, however, that this question is somewhat academic. Tocharians in the modern sense are, then, defined as the speakers of the Tocharian languages. These were originally nomads, and lived in today's Xinjiang (Tarim basin). The native name of the historical Tocharians of the 6th to 8th centuries was, according to J. P. Mallory, possibly kuśiññe "Kuchean" (Tocharian B), "of the kingdom of Kucha and Agni", and ārśi (Tocharian A); one of the Tocharian A texts has ārśi-käntwā, "In the tongue of Arsi" (ārśi is probably cognate to argenteus, i.e. "shining, brilliant"). According to Douglas Q. Adams, the Tocharians may have called themselves ākñi, meaning "borderers, marchers".

The Ancient Sanskrit literature refers to Tocharians as Tusharas, Tukharas, Tokharas and Tuharas etc. There are numerous references to this people in the ancient Sanskrit texts. E.g:

Atharavaveda Parisista (Ed Bolling & Negelein, 41.3.3) associates the Tusharas with the Sakas,Yavanas and the Bahilkas. (Saka. Yavana.Tushara.Bahlikashcha). Atharvaveda-Parisia also juxtaposes the Kambojas with the Bahlikas (Kamboja-Bahlika..., AV-Par, 57.2.5; cf Persica-9, 1980, p 106, Dr Michael Witzel). This shows the Tusharas probably were neighbors to the Shakas, Bahlikas, Yavanas and the Kambojas in Transoxian region.

The Santi Parva of Mahabharata associates the Tusharas with the Yavanas, Kiratas, Gandharas, Chinas, Kambojas, Pahlavas, Kankas, Sabaras, Barbaras, Ramathas etc. and brands them all as Barbaric tribes of Uttarapatha, leading lives of Dasyus (MBH 12.65.13-15).

Sabha Parva of Mahabharata (Chapters 48-50) states that kings of the Kambojas, Sakas , Tukharas, Kankas and Romakas etc had brought with them as tribute camels, horses, elephants and gold on the occasion of Rajasuya Yajna performed by Yudhisthira at Hastinapura. Later the Tusharas, Sakas and Yavanas had joined the military division of the Kambojas and had participated in the Mahabharata war on Kauravas' side (MBH 6.66.17-21; MBH 8.88.17). Karna Parva of Mahabharata describes the Tusharas as very ferocious and wrathful warriors.

At one place in Mahabharata, the Tusharas find mention with the Shakas and the Kankas (Shakas.Tusharah.Kankascha). At another place they come with the Shakas, Kankas and Pahlavas (Shakas Tusharah Kankashch.Pahlavashcha). And at other places they come with the Shakas, Yavanas and the Kambojas (Shaka.Tushara.Yavanashcha sadinah sahaiva.Kambojavaraijidhansavah) OR (Kritavarma tu sahitah Kambojarvarai.Bahlikaih...Tushara.Yavanashchaiva.Shakashcha saha Chulikaih) etc.

Puranic texts like Vayu Purana, Brahamanda Purana and Vamana Purana etc associates the Tusharas with the Shakas, Barbaras, Kambojas, Daradas, Viprendras, Anglaukas, Yavanas, Pahlavas etc and refer to them all as the tribes of Udichya i.e. north or north-west (Brahmanda Purana 27.46-48).

Puranic literature further states that the Tusharas and other tribes like Gandharas, Shakas, Pahlavas, Kambojas, Paradas, Yavanas, Barbaras, Khasa, Lampakas etc would be invaded and annhilated by King Kaliki at the end of Kaliyuga. And they were annhilated by king Pramiti at the end of Kaliyga (Vayu I.58.78-83; cf: Matsya 144.51-58).

According to Vayu Purana and Matsya Purana, river Chakshu (Oxus or Amu Darya) flowed through the countries of Tusharas, Lampakas, Pahlavas, Paradas and the Shakas etc (Vayu Purana I.58.78-83).

The Brihat-Katha-Manjari (10/1/285-86) of Pt Kshmendra relates that around 400 AD, Gupta king Vikramaditya (Chandragupta II) had "unburdened the sacred earth by destroying the barbarians" like the Tusharas, Shakas, Mlecchas, Kambojas, Yavanas, Parasikas, Hunas etc.

Rajatrangini of Kalhana attests that king Laliditya Muktapida, the eighth century ruler of Kashmir had invaded the tribes of the north and after defeating the Kambojas, he immediately faced the Tusharas. The Tusharas did not give a fight but fled to the mountain ranges leaving their horses in the battle field (RT IV.165-166). This shows that during 8th century AD, a section of the Tusharas were living as neighbors of the Kambojas near the Oxus valley.

But sixth century AD Brhatsamhita of Vrahamihira also locates the Tusharas with Barukachcha (Bhroach) and Barbaricum (on the Indus Delta) near sea in western India (bharukaccha.samudra.romaka.tushrah.. :Brhatsamhita XVI.6). The Romakas was a colony of the Romans near the port of Barbaricum in Sindhu Delta (see comments: Dr M. R Singh in The Geographical Data of Early Purana, 1972, p 26). This shows that a section of the Tusharas had also moved to western India and was living there around Vrahamihira's time.

Going out of the Iron Pass, seventh century AD Chinese pilgrim Hiun Tsang had entered Tu-huo-lo (Tushara) country which lied to the north of the great snow mountains (Hindukush), to the south of Iron Pass and to the east of Persia. During Hiun Tsang’s times, country of Tushara was divided into 27 administrative units, each having its separate chieftain. The Kumitos of Hiun Tsang's accounts (or the Kumijis of Al-Maqidisi) appear to be Kambojas who were living neigbors to the Tusharas across the Hindukush in the Oxus valley.

The tenth century AD Kavyamimamsa of Rajsheikher lists the Tusharas with several other tribes of the Uttarapatha viz: the Shakas, Kekeyas, Vokkanas, Hunas, Kambojas, Bahlikas, Pahlavas, Limpakas, Kulutas, Tanganas, Turushakas, Barbaras, Ramathas etc. (See: Kavyamimamsa, Chaper 17). This attests that the Tusharas were different from the Turushakas with whom they are often confused by some writers.

There is also a mention of Tushara-Giri (Tushara mountain) in the Mahabharata, Harshacharita of Bana Bhata and Kavyamimansa of Rajshekhar.

The Rishikas are said to be same people as the Yuezhis (Dr V. S. Aggarwala, K. D. Sethna). The Kushanas or Kanishkas are also the same people (Dr J. C. Vidyalnkara). Prof Stein says that the Tukharas (Tokharois/Tokarais) were a branch of the Yue-chi or Yuezhi. Thus, the Rishikas (q.v.), Tusharas/Tukharas (Tokharoi/Tokaroi) and the Yuezhis probably were either same or an allied people.

Aryan: Culture Bearers To China

In July 1996 two students wading in the Columbia River at Kennewick, Washington, stumbled across the skeletal remains of a middle-aged European male. At first anthropologists presumed they had discovered a pioneer who had died in the late 1800's. But radiocarbon dating subsequently showed that the skeleton was a remarkable 9,300 years old. In fact, "Kennewick Man" is the latest in a series of ancient skeletal discoveries which are giving rise to the theory that some of the earliest inhabitants of North America were Europeans who migrated from the Eurasian continent via a land bridge in the Bering Sea near the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago. Dr. Robert Bonnischen, director of the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Oregon State University, believes that "Kennewick Man" helps cast doubt on the accuracy of the term "paleo-Indian," which is usually used to describe this period of American prehistory. "Maybe some of these guys were really just paleo-American," he admits.
Of course, such facts pose a major challenge to the Politically Correct version of history, which promotes the idea that White Americans shamefully stole their country from its supposed Indian owners. Not surprisingly, therefore, attempts have been made to prevent the facts about "Kennewick Man" from being made public. Encouraged by the Clinton government, American Indians have made a claim on the skeleton using a 1990 Federal law intended to protect their grave sites. Their declared intention is to bury it immediately in a secret location and prevent further scientific examination and DNA testing. However, eight U.S. anthropologists, who claim that the Indians and the Federal government fear the implications of the discovery, began a legal battle in October 1996 to prevent the secret burial from taking place.

In fact, "Kennewick Man" is an important addition to the growing body of evidence which suggests that during the period of the Upper Paleolithic, between about 10,000 and 35,000 years ago, Whites — i.e., men indistinguishable from modern Europeans — lived not only in Europe, but also in a band stretching across northern Asia to the Pacific. In Siberia and other eastern regions they were eventually displaced and absorbed by Mongoloid peoples, although isolated pockets of European genes have survived in northern Asia until this day. The mixed-race Ainu people of Japan are an example.

The credibility of this theory has been dramatically strengthened in recent years by the remarkable discovery of more than 100 naturally mummified European corpses, ranging from 2,400 to 4,000 years old, in the Tarim Basin region of western China. Amazingly well preserved by the arid climate in the area, the mummies give evidence of a Nordic people with an advanced culture, splendidly attired in colorful robes, trousers, boots, stockings, coats, and hats. In one large tomb the corpses of three women and one man were discovered. The man, about 55 years old at death, was about six feet tall and had yellowish brown hair that was turning white. One of the better preserved women was close to six feet tall, with yellowish-brown hair dressed in braids. [Image: Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan), largest province in China, site of the Tarim Basin mummies.]

Items found with the bodies included fur coats, leather mittens, and an ornamental mirror, while the woman also held bags containing small knives and herbs, probably for use as medicines. At Cherchen, on the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert, the mummified corpse of an infant was found, probably no more than three months old at the time of death, wrapped in brown wool and with its eyes covered with small, flat stones. Next to the head was a drinking cup made from a bovine horn and an ancient "baby bottle" made from a sheep's teat that had been cut and sewn so it could hold milk. One male mummy even had traces of a surgical operation on his neck, with the incision being sewn up with horsehair stitches. [Image: Tall, blond European, buried 3,000 years ago in western China. The mummified bodies of dozens of his kinsmen have been disinterred in the same area.]

Several European mummies had in fact already been found in the Tarim Basin area early in this century, one of which was reminiscent of a Welsh or Irish woman, and another of a Bohemian burgher. All were dressed in fine clothing, including jaunty caps with feathers stuck in them that bore a striking resemblance to alpine headgear still worn in western Europe today. But these earlier discoveries, not much more than 2,000 years old, were dismissed as the bodies of isolated Europeans who had happened to stray into the territory and so were regarded as being of no cultural or historical significance.

Indeed, modern scholars, attuned to Politically Correct historical fashion, have tended to downplay evidence of any early trade or contact between China and the West during this period, regarding the development of Chinese civilization as an essentially homegrown affair sealed off from outside influences. Any diffusion of people and culture, moreover, was held to have been from east to west, with the Europeans being civilized by the Chinese. The very eminent prehistorian Gordon Childe, for example, in 1958 summed up European prehistory as being the story of "the irradiation of European barbarism by Oriental civilization. [1]

But the latest mummy finds in the Tarim Basin region are too numerous, too ancient, and too revealing to dismiss in this way. Most important, they have helped to reopen the debate about the role which Europeans played in the origins of civilization in China, with some archeologists again beginning to argue that Europeans might have been responsible for introducing into China such basic items as the wheel and the first metal objects. This is actually reaffirming theories that were advocated at the beginning of the century, but which were subsequently buried in an avalanche of Political Correctness. In 1912, for example, the distinguished Cambridge scholar A.C. Haddon noted in The Wanderings of Peoples the possibility that the progressive element of the old Chinese civilization was due to the migration of a semi-cultured people from the west.

Now, according to Dr. Han Kangxin, a physical anthropologist at the Institute of Archeology in Beijing, the skeletal and mummified evidence clearly points to the fact that the earliest inhabitants of the Tarim Basin region were White people related to the Cro-Magnons of Paleolithic Europe. This theory is supported by Dr. Victor Mair, a specialist in ancient Asian languages and cultures at the University of Pennsylvania, who stimulated the major search which found the mummies. He has emerged as the main advocate of the theory that large groups of Europeans were present in the Tarim Basin long before the area's present inhabitants, suggesting that Turkic speakers did not move into the area until about the eighth century B.C. Subsequently, he believes, the newcomers displaced the Europeans, although the major ethnic group in the area today, the Uygur, includes people with unusually fair hair and complexions.

Actually, evidence of a now-extinct Indo-European people who lived in central Asia has long existed. Known as Tocharians, they are described more accurately as Arsi, which is cognate with Sanskrit arya and Old Persian ariya, meaning "Aryan": "that which is noble or worthy." Their language, which has similarities to the Celtic and Germanic branches of the Indo-European tree, is recorded in manuscripts dated between the sixth and eighth centuries A.D., and solid evidence for its existence can be found as far back as the third century

. Despite the fact that Tocharian manuscripts are found only for the later period, linguists have isolated occasional Tocharian words embedded in manuscripts written in Gandhari Prakrit, a northwest Indian vernacular that served as the administrative language for large parts of the Tarim Basin during the third through the fifth centuries. Also, the Tocharians were earlier known as the Yuezhi (or Ruzhi), to whom references occur in Chinese texts as early as the fifth century B.C., within the time frame of the Tarim Basin mummies.

The Tocharians are vividly displayed in ancient wall paintings at Kizil and Kumtura (near the modern Chinese city K'u-ch'e, in the Tien Shan Mountains north of the Tarim Basin) as aristocratic Europeans, with red or blond hair parted neatly in the middle, long noses, blue or green eyes set in narrow faces, and tall bodies. The Yuezhi from the first century B.C. also are depicted in striking painted statues at Khalchayan (west of the Surkhan River in ancient Bactria). They too are shown to be Europeans with long noses, thin faces, blond hair, pink skin, and bright blue eyes. It is known from historical sources that during the second century B.C. the Greater Yuezhi moved from northwest China to Ferghana and Bactria, which lie on the far side of the Pamirs. From there they moved south across the Hindu Kush into Afghanistan and the northern part of the Indian subcontinent, where they founded the mighty Kushan empire. The latter, in turn, extended its power back into the Tarim Basin and with it spread Buddhism, which eventually reached China.

"The new finds are also forcing a reexamination of old Chinese books that describe historical or legendary figures of great height, with deep-set blue or green eyes, long noses, full beards, and red or blond hair. Scholars have traditionally scoffed at these accounts, but it now seems that they may be accurate." (Victor Mair)

One hypothesis gaining increasing support is that the migration of these Indo-Europeans began with their invention of wheeled wagons. Working with Russian archeologists, Dr. David W. Anthony, an anthropologist at Hartwick College in New York, has discovered traces of wagon wheels in 5,000-year-old burial mounds on the steppes of southern Russia and Kazakhstan. This line of investigation has a direct bearing on the question of the European mummies in China because tripartite disk wheels similar in construction to those found in western Asia and Europe during the third and second millennium B.C. have been found in the Gobi Desert, northeast of the Tarim Basin. Similarly, spoked wheels dating to the early second millennium B.C. have been unearthed at a site nearby.

Most researchers now agree that the birthplace of horse-drawn vehicles and horse riding was in the steppes of Ukraine, rather than in China or the Near East. As Dr. Anthony and his colleagues have shown through microscopic study of ancient horse teeth, horses already were being harnessed in Ukraine 6,000 years ago. Also, wooden chariots with elaborate, spoked wheels have been shown to date to around 2,000 B.C. in the same area. In comparison, chariots do not appear in China until some 800 years later. Ritual horse burials similar to those in ancient Ukraine also have been excavated in the Tarim Basin, as well as remains of wagon wheels made by doweling together three carved, parallel wooden planks. Wagons with nearly identical wheels are known from the grassy plains of Ukraine as far back as 3,000 B.C.

A number of artifacts recovered from the Tarim Basin mummy burials have provided important evidence for early horse riding. These include a wooden bit and leather reins, a horse whip consisting of a single strip of leather attached to a wooden handle, a wooden cheek piece with leather straps, and a padded leather saddle of exquisite workmanship. This seems to confirm that the mummies belonged to a mobile, horse-riding culture that spread from the plains of eastern Europe. It also supports the growing belief of archeologists that the spread of Indo-European genes, culture, and language may be linked to the gradual spread of horse riding and the technology of horse-drawn vehicles from their origins in Europe 6,000 years ago.

These discoveries have extremely important consequences for understanding the origins of Chinese civilization, since the chariot has now been demonstrated to have entered China only around the middle of the second millennium B.C., at roughly the same time that bronze metallurgy and writing developed there. The evidence suggests, therefore, that wagons and chariots were introduced into China from the west by Indo-Europeans. It also shows that the European penetration of China did not begin with the opening of the transcontinental Silk Road trade route that history books usually place in the second century B.C., but at least 2,000 years earlier at the turn of the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, when the whole of Eurasia became culturally and technologically interconnected by migrating Europeans.

Waves of migration over a period of at least 7,000 years (8,000 B.C.-1,000 B.C.) carried Aryans from a homeland north of the Black Sea into western Europe, northern India, western China, and North America (via the Bering Strait).
Actually, as early as 1951 the German archeologist Robert Heine-Geldern sought to show a series of similarities between the metalwork of Europe and China around 800 B.C. His evidence included horse gear, two-edged swords, socketed axes, and spearheads, which he believed originated in the Hallstatt and Caucasus metallurgical centers. Arguing that a "Pontic Migration" had taken place from Europe across Asia, he suggested that the Dongson culture of south China could best be explained as the result of influences carried directly from Europe during the 9th and 8th centuries B.C. [2]

Two years later the well known Russian archeologist S. I. Rudenko noted the existence of mummies with European features in the royal tombs of Pazyryk in the Altai mountains, dated to the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. This evidence was subsequently added to by John Haskins of the University of Pittsburgh, who argued that the Yueh-chih (an ancient Chinese name for the Tocharians) of the Pazyryk region of the Altai might have been related to the Celts of continental Europe.

Significantly, the Tarim Basin mummies have provided further evidence which supports Heine-Geldern's theory. Some of the grave goods found with the mummies strongly suggest a connection with the "socketed celt horizon," typified by socketed bronze celts (axes which have bent wooden handles inserted at the end opposite the blade) and other distinctive bronze objects, such as knives with zoomorphic handles. The "socketed celt horizon" is dated roughly 1,800 to 1,000 B.C. stretching across Europe and correlates well with certain facets of a horse-riding and chariot/cart culture which emphasized hunting with composite bows and perhaps crossbows.

Thus, new credence has been given to previously ignored and ridiculed theories for the origins and development of civilization in China. In light of the new evidence, Edwin Pulleyblank of the University of British Columbia recently argued that European influence may have been an important factor in the unification of the Chinese states and the establishment of the first centralized Chinese empire by Ch'in Shih Huang Ti in the year 221 B.C. He points to the external arrival on the Chinese steppe frontier of the military technique of mounted archery, first explicitly mentioned in Chinese sources in the year 307 B.C. In the west mounted archery appears with the Scythians, closely related to the Celts, who are first mentioned in Near Eastern sources around 800 B.C. and whose way of life is described at length by the Greek historian Herodotus. Ironically, it was the technique of mounted archery that defined the classic nomadism that dominated the European steppe and made possible the great steppe empires of the Xiongnu, the Turks, and the Mongols that later terrorized Europe.

Pulleyblank effectively suggests that European technology was copied by the Chinese and turned against its original inventors. Indeed, a suggestive analogy to the spread of mounted archery eastward to the borders of China can be seen in the way in which the acquisition of horses by the Indians from the Spaniards in Mexico and their use in warfare transformed the Great Plains of North America from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. This theory of Mongoloid imitation is also reflected in the many words of Indo-European origin in the earliest known layers of Sinitic languages. These include words for "horse," "track," "cart," "wheel," and "cow" and suggest further that it was Europeans who brought these things into China.

Textile samples from the late second millennium B.C. found in the Tarim Basin graves also provide evidence of the diffusion of European technological sophistication to China. One fragment was a wool twill woven with a plaid design which required looms that have never before been associated with China or eastern Central Asia at such an early date. Irene Good, a specialist in textile archeology at the University of Pennsylvania, has confirmed that the plaid fabric was virtually identical stylistically and technically to textile fragments found in Austria and Germany at sites from a somewhat later period.

Dr. Elizabeth J.W. Barber, a linguist and archeologist at Occidental College in Los Angeles and the author of Prehistoric Textiles (Princeton University Press, 1991), confirms that the Chinese did not use and did not even know twill, but obtained knowledge of the weave from the West, and only after the Han period. Significantly, there appear to be many connections between the Tarim Basin mummies and the 5,000 year old "Ice Man" found in the Austrian Alps in 1991. These include the type and style of clothing, personal artifacts, solar-religious symbolism, and tattoos for healing and decoration — as well, of course, as the distinct racial commonality.

The evidence, therefore, increasingly seems to confirm a Celtic culture extending across Eurasia at least 4,000 years ago. As one academic, James Opie, an expert on design motifs in ancient rugs and bronze implements, has pointed out, it is highly significant that Celtic endless-knot motifs, swastikas, and animal-style decorations have been discovered from Europe, through Iran, to China. The religion of the Celts — including the Scythians — was solar, and three- and four-armed swastikas as solar symbols are an omnipresent element in Celtic art. Likewise, the Tarim Basin Europeans displayed a definite penchant for spiral solar symbols, painting them on their faces and engraving them on the bridles of their horses. This in itself suggests that they were Nordics who were and always have been worshippers of the sun and sky, and more generally of Nature. As Dr. Michael Puett, a historian of East Asian civilization at Harvard University, has argued, the Tarim Basin mummies reveal clear processes of a cultural diffusion from Europe outward.

All of this supports the thesis of the pioneering archeologist Colin Renfrew, who challenged the previously accepted idea that prehistoric culture began in the Near East or Central Asia and was only later "diffused" into "barbarian" Europe. It confirms that the cultural prerequisites for civilization are much, much older in Europe than has been acknowledged, and suggests that far from Europe being civilized from outside, it was rather the rest of the world, including Asia, which was civilized by colonizing Europeans. [3]

1. V. Gordon Childe, Antiquity , 32 (1958), 70

2. J. P. Mallory, In Search of the Indo-Europeans (London, 1989), 59.

3. Colin Renfrew, Before Civilization (New York, 1974).

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