Genetic Testing Reveals Awkard Truth About Xinjiang's Famous (Red-Headed) Mummies

URUMQI, China - After years of controversy and political intrigue, archaeologists using genetic testing have proven that Caucasians roamed China’s Tarim Basin 1,000 years before East Asian people arrived.

The research, which the Chinese government has appeared to have delayed making public out of concerns of fueling Uighur Muslim separatism in its western-most Xinjiang region, is based on a cache of ancient dried-out corpses that have been found around the Tarim Basin in recent decades.

“It is unfortunate that the issue has been so politicized because it has created a lot of difficulties,” Victor Mair, a specialist in the ancient corpses and co-author of “Mummies of the Tarim Basin”, told AFP.

“It would be better for everyone to approach this from a purely scientific and historical perspective.”

The discoveries in the 1980s of the undisturbed 4,000-year-old ”Beauty of Loulan” and the younger 3,000-year-old body of the ”Charchan Man” are legendary in world archaeological circles for the fine state of their preservation and for the wealth of knowledge they bring to modern research.

In historic and scientific circles the discoveries along the ancient Silk Road were on a par with finding the Egyptian mummies.

But China’s concern over its rule in restive Xinjiang has widely been perceived as impeding faster research into them and greater publicity of the findings.

The desiccated corpses, which avoided natural decomposition due to the dry atmosphere and alkaline soils in the Tarim Basin, have not only given scientists a look into their physical biologies, but their clothes, tools and burial rituals have given historians a glimpse into life in the Bronze Age.

Mair, who played a pivotal role in bringing the discoveries to Western scholars in the 1990s, has worked tirelessly to get Chinese approval to take samples out of China for definitive genetic testing.

One expedition in recent years succeeded in collecting 52 samples with the aide of Chinese researchers, but later Mair’s hosts had a change of heart and only let five of them out of the country.

“I spent six months in Sweden last year doing nothing but genetic research,” Mair said from his home in the United States where he teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.

“My research has shown that in the second millennium BC, the oldest mummies, like the Loulan Beauty, were the earliest settlers in the Tarim Basin.

“From the evidence available, we have found that during the first 1,000 years after the Loulan Beauty, the only settlers in the Tarim Basin were Caucasoid.”

East Asian peoples only began showing up in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin about 3,000 years ago, Mair said, while the Uighur peoples arrived after the collapse of the Orkon Uighur Kingdom, largely based in modern day Mongolia, around the year 842.

“Modern DNA and ancient DNA show that Uighurs, Kazaks, Krygyzs, the peoples of Central Asia are all mixed Caucasian and East Asian. The modern and ancient DNA tell the same story,” he said.

China has only allowed the genetic studies in the last few years, with a 2004 study carried out by Jilin University also finding that the mummies’ DNA had Europoid genes, further proving that the earliest settlers of Western China were not East Asians.

In the preface to the 2002 book, “Ancient Corpses of Xinjiang,” written by Chinese archeologist Wang Huabing, the Chinese historian and Sanskrit specialist Ji Xianlin soundly denounced the use of the mummies by Uighur separatists as proof that Xinjiang should not belong to China.

“What has stirred up the most excitement in academic circles, both in the East and the West, is the fact that the ancient corpses of “white (Caucasoid/Europid) people’ have been excavated,” Jin wrote.

“However, within China a small group of ethnic separatists have taken advantage of this opportunity to stir up trouble and are acting like buffoons, (styling) themselves the descendants of these ancient “white people’ with the aim of dividing the motherland.”

Further on, in an apparent swipe at the government’s lack of eagerness to acknowledge the science and publicize it to the world, Ji wrote, “a scientist may not distort facts for political reasons, religious reasons, or any other reason”.

Meanwhile, Yingpan Man, a nearly perfectly preserved 2,000-year-old Caucasoid mummy, was only this month allowed to leave China for the first time, and is being displayed at the Tokyo Edo Museum.

The Yingpan Man, discovered in 1995 in the region that bears his name, has been seen as the best preserved of all the undisturbed mummies that have so far been found.

Yingpan Man not only had a gold foil death mask -- a Greek tradition -- covering his blonde bearded face, but also wore elaborate golden embroidered red and maroon garments with seemingly Western European designs.

His nearly 2.00 meter (six-foot, six-inch) long body is the tallest of all the mummies found so far and the clothes and artifacts discovered in the surrounding tombs suggest the highest level of Caucasoid civilization in the ancient Tarim Basin region.

When the Yingpan Man returns from Tokyo to Urumqi where he has long been kept out of public eye, he is expected to be finally put on display when the new Xinjiang Museum opens this year.

China has hundreds of the mummies in various degrees of dessication and decomposition, including the prominent Han Chinese warrior Zhang Xiong and other Uighur mummies.

However, only a dozen or so are on permanent display in a makeshift building until the new museum is completed.

HISTORY

Kashgar is a important hub on the Old Silk Road,a vibrant Islamic centre within Chinese territory. It is the largest oasis city in Chinese Central Asia and 90 per cent of its population of over 3,000,,000 are Uygur.Only in The city is populating 300,000. Kashgar's importance derives from its stratehic position at the foot of the Pamir Mountains, commanding access to the high glacial passes of the Silk Road routes into Central Asia, India and Persia. The weary trade caravans plodding west on the northern and southern routes met up at Kashgar, the desert hazards and demons finally behind them. Merchants bound for China thawed out after descending to Kashgar from the peaks of the Pamirs or the Karakorams, and exchanged their stolid yaks and exhaused packhorses for camles to convey their merchandese into Inner province of China.

Kashgar Has a history of more than 2'000 years. the earlist reference appeared in Persian documents referring to an alliance of Tushlan tribes, who founded their capital here. Kashgar was posibly the first of the Buddhist kingdoms of the Tarim basin. In the second century AD, Hinayana Buddhism flourished here and continued to do so until the ninth or tenth century. During this period Indian and Persian cultural influences were strong. Xuan Zang noted that the Kashgaris had green eyes-perhaps a reference to Aryan origins-and that for their writing they take their model from India....The disposition of the men is fierce and impetuous, and they are mostly false adn deceitful. They make light of decorum and politeness, and esteem learning but little.

In the first century AD, during the Han Dynasty, China lost its power over the Tarim Basin. The great General Ban Chao was dispatched to subdue the wild kingdoms of Silk Road that had aligned themselves with the Xiongnu against the Chinese. He took the kingdoms of Kashgar, Hetian and Loulan either by brute force or cunning strategy, installed pro-Chinese rulers and reopened the southern Silk Road to trade. Ban Chao remained in Chinese Central Asia for 31 years, crushing rebellions and establishing diplomatic relations with more than 50 states in the Western Regions. Accompanied by horsemen arrayed in bright red leather,he himself went as far west as Merv and made contacts with Parthia,Babylonia and Syria.

In the early seventh century,Kashgar recognized the suzerainty of Tang China, which garrisoned the city. However, the Chinese were soon forced to withdraw between 670and 694, when Tibet expanded its territories throughout the southern oases of Tarim Basin.Between the tenth and 12th centuries the Kharakhanid Khanate, a loose mondic alliance of the Qarluq Turkic tribes, controlled the area between Bokhara and Hetian from its capital in Kashgar. The Sunni Muslim, Satuq Bughra Khan, was the first king of the Kharakhanid of Kashgar; he and his successors carried on bloody jihads against the still-Buddhist kingdoms of yarkant and Hotan. These battles, along with fierce Kharakhanid internecine struggles, disrupted the caravan trade, and East-West trade was increasingly forced to relay on the sea routes.

Following the death of Chaghatai, who inherited the region from his father, Ghengis Khan,there followed numerous succession wars. Only briefly during the mid-14th century, when Telug Timur had his capital in Kashgar, was a degree of calm and stability restored,But Tamerlane's armies were soon to lay waste to the Kingdom of Kashgaria.
In the 16th century,Kashgar came under the ruler of a religious leader, or khoja, whose colleagues formed a powerful clique in Bokhara and Samarkand. A theological split saw the formation of two opposing sects, the Black and White Mountaineers,which began a bloody see-sawing of power between Kashgar and Yarkant that ended `only with Qing intervention two centuries later. The Khojas attempted to return to power in Kashgar no fewer than six times,frequently backed by the Khokand Khanate and aided by Kirgiz nomadic horsemen,bringing fearful reprisals on the citizens. An unfortunate observer of the khojas' last atempt in 1857 was a German,Adolbhus Schlagintweit, whose throat was cut because of his arrogant comment that the three-month siege of Kashgar would have taken his countrymen a mere three days.

Kashar was substantially fortified during the short but violent reign of Yakup Beg, who ruled Kashgaria from 1866 to 1877. This infamous soldier from Khokand ruled most of Xinjing, from Kashgar to Urumqi,Turpan and Hami,concluded treaties with Britain and Russia, and had the support of the Ottoman Empire. In 1869, Robert Shew, a British trader and unoffical dilomat, became the first Englishman to visit Kashgar and Kashgar, and was able to command two audiences with Yakub Beg,even though he was under virtual house arrest for the duration of his stay in the city.He wrote of Kashgar:'Intering the gateway, we passed throgh several large quadrangles whose sides were lined with rank of brilliantly attired guards, all sitting in solem silence so that they seemed to form part of the architecture of the building....Entire rows of these men (were)clad in silken robes and many seemed to be of high rank judging from the richness of their equipment.' After a leisurely three-year advance on Xinjiang, the 60,000 strong Chinese army of Zuo Zongtang suppressed the Muslim rebellions in Gansu and then moved southwest through the oasis towns, eventually ending Yakub Beg's rule in 1877. Yakub Beg fled to Kashgar where he died-rumoured to have either had a stroke or poisoned himself.In 1884,Qing government establish Xinjiang as province first.
As anti-Chinese Muslim rebellions broke out throughout Xinjiang in the 1930s, a pan-Turkic Islamic movement based in Kashgar declared an Independent Muslim Republic of Eastern Turkestan.In 1949,the three arear-revalutionary army accept the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party,xinjiang entered a new construction.

The Kashgar prefecture administers 11 counties,one city with a population of over 3 million. It is one of the main agricultural areas of Xinjing,producing cotton,rice,wheat,corn,beans and fruit.

LOCATION AND AREA

Kashgar is 141,600 square kiolmeters in total area and between latitude 35 20 to 40 18 north and longitude 73 20 to 79 57 east in the sourthen part of Xinjiang, is contiguous with the Taklimakan Desert on its east and borders Kyrgyzstan,Tajikistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India to its west and southwest respectively. The city of Kashgar, a place of strategic importance in south Xinjiang, has an area of fifteen square kilometers with an average elevation of 1289.5 meters. The city is located between latitude 39 25 to 39 35 north and longitude 75 56 to 76 04 east and lies 1,473 kilometers from Urumchi,capital city of of Xinjianng Uihgur Autonomous Region.

http://www.silkroadcn.com/Kashgar.htm

Read this excellent book by a textile/fabric expert:

The Mummies Of Urumchi - Brief Article - EX
Natural History, July, 1999 by Elizabeth Wayland Barber

From THE MUMMIES OF URUMCHI by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. Copyright [C] 1999 by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. With permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.

With their high-bridged noses, deep round eye sockets, and fair hair, the ancient mummies found in the Tarim Basin in central Asia bear little resemblance to the Turkic or Mongol residents of the region today.

The woman from Qawrighul (Gumugou, in Chinese) lies in state in the first case of the mummy gallery in the museum at Urumchi, capital of the remote Chinese-administered region known as Xinjiang and some sixteen hundred miles west of Beijing. She is bundled up in a brown woolen wrap with funerary gifts surrounding her. Buried between 2000 and 1800 B.C. (the era of Abraham and the patriarchs), she is one of the earliest mummies exhumed from China's Tarim Basin, toward the eastern end of the egg-shaped Taklimakan Desert between Mongolia in the north and Tibet in the south. Framed by auburn hair, her face looks so peaceful and hauntingly beautiful that she is nicknamed the Beauty of Loulan. A painting by a local artist of how she probably looked when alive adorns wall posters and the CD covers of recordings by local Turkic musicians.

She is scarcely closer to Turkic in her anthropological type than she is to Han Chinese. The body and facial forms associated with Turks and Mongols began to appear in the Tarim cemeteries only in the first millennium B.C., fifteen hundred years after this woman lived. But the local inhabitants do have a good reason to think of these mummies as among their ancestors, for a noticeable number of the non-Chinese people living in Xinjiang today have blue eyes and light brown or reddish hair, a legacy of old intermarriages with the ancient early arrivals from the west, who lost their linguistic and cultural--but not genetic--identity a thousand years ago in the rising tide of people entering from the north and east.

The artifacts around this woman tell us much. Her crude, ankle-high moccasins consist of leather with the fur on the outside, while her midi-length skirt has the fur turned inward for warmth. Her knee-length overwrap, secured with a wooden pin, is woven of sheep's wool and constructed with extra weft. Thousands of long loops on the surface further insulate the wearer.

The hoodlike woolen cap alone tells many tales. To make it, the woman started by felting blond wool over two pieces of dark brown woven cloth. We know the cloth came from two sources, because on the left side, both warp and weft are spun in the same direction, whereas half the threads in the right-hand cloth are spun the opposite way. The hat's edging, a cord plaited of red and probably blue yarns, gives us our one and only indicator that she and her people already knew how to dye wool. She finished off her headgear by sticking a large straight feather into it. The woman also has a soft, neatly woven wheat basket and a winnowing tray, which, like her woolen clothing and Caucasian features, demonstrate yet again the western origins of these early Central Asian cultures. Together they show that the migration of these westerners must have come later than 4000 B.C., by which time the peoples of the Fertile Crescent were breeding woolly sheep and cultivating large-grained varieties of wheat.

Today the area around Qawrighul is desert, spreading across the terraced hills north of an intermittently flowing river sometimes called the Qum-darya (Sand or Sandy River). The Turkic name of the range, Quruk-Tagh, says it well: it means "dry mountains." Investigations into recorded Chinese history show that two thousand years ago, a city thrived somewhere in the Loulan area, a vital link in the trade route from China to the Roman Empire the so-called Silk Road across central Asia. This city, known as Loulan Station, sat near the shore of a large shallow lake that received vast amounts of water from the Tarim River and its sometime tributary the Konqi. Together these two rivers drained the meltwater from most of the mountain ranges that ring the Tarim Basin.

But one dreadful day in about A.D. 330, storms and flooding pushed the river's course far south across the flatlands, stranding the bustling city of Loulan and creating a new and smaller lake far away. Its water gone, Loulan died, along with its trees and other vegetation. Marco Polo knew of no lake in the northern zone in 1273, only, as one scholar put it, "the desert of Lop, in which he heard voices of ghosts speaking and out of whose depth there seemed to him to come the beating of drums--the howling of the sandstorms."

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