On The Presence Of Non-Chinese At Anyang

It has now become clear that finds of chariot remains, metal knives and axes of northern provenance, and bronze mirrors of western provenance in the tombs of Anyang indicate that the Shang had at least indirect contact with people who were familiar with these things. Who were these people? Where did they live? When did they arrive?

Following the discovery of the Tarim Mummies, we now know that the population of the earliest attested cultures of what is present-day Xinjiang were of northwestern or western derivation. According to the craniometric studies of Ran Kangxin, these people can be divided into three distinct types.

The first group to arrive are held to have come from the north because the cranial measurements of the surviving skulls of this type are affinial with the skulls of the Afanasevo culture in particular, which was located in the Sayan-Altai/North Mongolia area, and with the skull types of steppe people living much further to the west. This group is called "Proto-European" by Mair and Mallory, and it can be dated to have arrived in Xinjiang about 1800 B.C.E. or somewhat earlier.

It has been suggested that this group may have been a relatively small group of Afanasevo/Tocharian refugees fleeing to the south, away from Indo-Iranian expansion arriving from regions west and southwest of the Sayan-Altai.

If we accept the refugee classification of these people, it helps us explain the geographical position in the southeast Tarim of the Qawrighul and Yanbulaq Proto-Europeans. It was as far away from everywhere as you could get-it was a safe place. This is important and may help us to understand much else that happened to these people prior to their arrival in Xinjiang, as well as what happened to them after this time.

For the period c. 2000-c. 1000 B.C.E.-which saw the emergence, development, expansion, and culmination of early Chinese civilization in the Erlitou, Erligang and related cultures, Anyang cultural continuum-there is no extant evidence of contact between the people of the eastern Tarim and the people of the emerging Chinese polity.

It is only from around c. 1000 B.C.E. that we have evidence for the arrival in Xinjiang of the two remaining types of caucasoid, the Pamir Ferghana and Indo-Afghan types. It is thought that the Pamir Ferghana type entered northwestern Xinjiang from contiguous regions to the west of the Tian Shan c. 1000 B.C.E. The Indo-Afghans are thought to have entered southwestern Xinjiang from Bactria somewhat later.

A clear illustration of "the three types of human cranial variation according to Han Kang xin," is provided on p. 238 of The Tarim Mummies and on p. 566 of The Bronze Age.

Given that there is no evidence to indicate interaction between the caucasoids of Xinjiang and their Han neighbors to the east, it is very unlikely that remains of any non-Chinese found at Anyang would have come from Xinjiang. This proposition is strengthened by the fact that the Pamir Ferghana and Indo-Afghan types are held to have entered Western Xinjiang around the time of the demise of the Shang, or after.

Heretofore, many scholars have suspected that there might have been a foreign contribution involved in the formative processes of the emerging Chinese polity, but beyond inferences and possibilities, no scholar has felt confident enough, or has been able to say, that there is material proof that this is possible.

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That's pretty much the case. Ancient weaving is highly priced ~ even a scrap provides an incredible amount of information.

Going back 50,000 to 35,000 years ago (heart of the ice age) Europeans and Chinese are essentially the same group. Then they are separated ~ and became a bit different.

Still, during the ice age there was enough gene flow back and forth that 5% of European genetic background is of East Asian origin, and 5% of East Asian genetic background is of European origin.

Yes, the Russians are Indo-European ~ they speak Russian! That category is linguistic and cultural, not genetic.

There's a "split" in the East Asian populations dating back about 20,000 years ~ one group has tooth roots much like Europeans and Africans. The other group has some extra roots on some of their molar teeth ~ that group is made up of the Emeshi, Ainu, Jomon and, in modern terms, a large chunk of the Samurai.

There are also numerous genetic isolates ~ small groups of humans isolated from all the others for thousands of years, and in the North there are the Sa'ami. They were the first people to break out of the Western European refugia near the end of the Ice Age ~ they count as genetic isolates but are certainly as widespread as were the Emeshi/Aimu/Jomon, both of whom actually reached the Americas as early as 24,000 years ago.

Until recently anthropoligists believed that the Sa'ami were a variety of East Asian, and that the Emeshi/Ainu/Jomon were a variety of European.

Both conclusions were erroneous according to genetic analysis.

One group of Sa'ami appear to have mixed things up with a different group of humans about 7,000 years ago who may have come from the Near-East, but not from East Asia or Europe. Current archaeological research taking place in Pakistan and Iran is revealing the existence of a very early "civiliation" that worked its way from the Indian subcontinent to Mesopotamia about that time ~ my wildest guess is these are the ancestors of the Sumerians who invented writing. Protypical pictoglyphs come into existence in one of the ancient Sa'ami core areas in Keralia (Russia and Finland) at about the same time. More work is needed, but keep your eyes open.

A little note on that connection, there's a school of philology that holds that the Sumerian language was drived from the Dravidian languages in East India and what is now the Malaysian peninsula. These same philologists link the modern Sa'ami languages to ancient Sumerian and NOT to far more recent Uralic-Altaic and Finno-Ugrian languages. In fact, they argue that the Sa'ami languages served as the base for most of the Finno-Ugrian sub-group ~ not the other way around. There are some grammatical peculiarities that demonstrate the case (according to the philologists) ~ one such peculiarity appears in inflected Germanic languages.

So, where did all the blue-eyed blonds come from? Well, that's pretty recent. Seems that human beings with pigmented skin can't make enough Vitamin D to survive in higher latitudes unless they have a reliable year round external source. Cattle play the part up to about 30 degrees North. From that point on you need oily fish ~ readily available in the seas surrounding the European peninsula, but rare in the Taiga and Tundra of Siberia. Even then, you need all the Vitamin D you can produce, so heavy pigmentation is quickly selected against and disappears in any European Far Northern population.

In East Asia the settlements in the Far North are of much more recent origin. Today's Aleuts and Eskimo can obtain vitamin D from many outside sources!

In the long run, though, given a few Dark Ages here and there, and population crashes, and the Eskimo will turn blond ~ and all of them will have blue eyes ~ just like the Huskies.

HMMM ~ here's one of those "I cursed my fate because I had no shoes, and then I met a man who had no feet".

Several of us on this board have spent several years studying all we could of the Sa'ami.

Talk about a minority, one tribe ~ the Skolt ~ are down to 500 people in Finland and less than 5,000 in Russia. The total in Europe is probably 100,000 counting all the tribes.

The Irish are not an endangered species, nor are the Scots, nor the Welsh, nor the Cornish, nor the Bretons, nor the Galicians.

Blam and I have a tribe with 500 people. Just last month the last person who could speak the language of a related tribe passed on ~ that tribe is no more.

Rejoice that you have sufficient members to know your tribes still exist.

Blam would probably like to know that a fellow we know whose done a lot of family genealogical work on folks from Otsego NY also has all the ills that affect the rest of us ~ I may have found several hundred more!

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