[sinanju]

How much was known about the Tarim Basin mummies and the Tocharians during the Indiana Jones era?

Is that what had the Nazi anthropologists traipsing all over Tibet and Central Asia?

[SunkenCiv]

One of the jobs of the SS (not the Waffen SS) was to look for various "magical" items. They also went into Tibet to fetch some Tibetan gurus or whatever and bring them back to the Reich. There was also a ceremony to unfurl the swastika flag on some mountain, I forget the name, which was the legendary (dunno in what legend) birthplace of the Aryans. :')

Unholy Alliance: A History of Nazi Involvement with the Occult by Peter Levenda

[blam]

"Is that what had the Nazi anthropologists traipsing all over Tibet and Central Asia?"

Take a look at the work of Aurel Stein and Sven Hedin