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On the Presence of Non-Chinese at Anyang by Kim Hayes 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...

For centuries, Bactria - a region shared by modern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan - was part of the Hellenistic world. Conquered by Alexander the Great, Bactria became the heart of a powerful Greek kingdom. And even after the Greco-Bactrian kingdom was overrun by nomads, its cities continued to thrive. This video explores their fates.The Lost Greek Cities of Central Asia | September 3, 2021 | toldinstone

Ancient Buddhist sculptures have been found in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province during an excavation work, a media report said Saturday. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa archaeology and museum director Abdul Samad said the sculptures and heads, dating back to second to fifth century BC, had been discovered during excavation at Bhamala Buddhist Complex in Haripur district, Dawn online reported. He said during excavation, precious coins of Kushana period were also found around the stupa. The official said the Bhamala archaeological site had been declared national and world heritage site located near Khanpur dam, located on the Haro river. "The ruins are situated near...

THE mound lies just beyond the oasis town of Sheberghan in northern Afghanistan, on the plain that slips south to the Hindu Kush and north to the banks of the Amu Darya, or Oxus. This was once Bactria, where the Hellenic world briefly touched and intertwined with the worlds of the Indus and the Siberian steppe. Greeks prospered here for a century or so after the death of Alexander the Great, in 323BC, and then were driven off. The mound is anonymous now, barely noticeable from the road. It stands three metres (ten feet) high, 100 metres in diameter, lopped...

A Biological Dig for the Roots of Language By NICHOLAS WADE Correction Appended Once upon a time, there were very few human languages and perhaps only one, and if so, all of the 6,000 or so languages spoken round the world today must be descended from it. If that family tree of human language could be reconstructed and its branching points dated, a wonderful new window would be opened onto the human past. Yet in the view of many historical linguists, the chances of drawing up such a tree are virtually nil and those who suppose otherwise are chasing a...

Under the rule of the Kushans, northwest India and adjoining regions participated both in seagoing trade and in commerce along the Silk Road to China. The name Kushan derives from the Chinese term Guishang, used in historical writings to describe one branch of the Yuezhi—a loose confederation of Indo-European people who had been living in northwestern China until they were driven west by another group, the Xiongnu, in 176–160 B.C. The Yuezhi reached Bactria (northwest Afghanistan and Tajikistan) around 135 B.C. Kujula Kadphises united the disparate tribes in the first century B.C. Gradually wresting control of the area from the...

~~~snip~~~ hey did a DNA test on the Cherchen man (the 3800 year old 6'6 tall dark blonde mummy and the oldest mummy found), and the beauty of Loulan (the red hair mummy), and both of these mummies contained East Asian Mongoloid DNA. Even the Chinese scientist were astonished. The Mongoloid component of the Tocharians are not from Han Chinese or pre Han Chinese, but most likely from Altaic types of Mongoloids such as Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Mongolians. This obviously indicates that the Tocharians were already mixed for quite a few generations, since they looked mostly Caucasian. Very interesting....

Charred grains of barley, millet and wheat deposited nearly 5,000 years ago at campsites in the high plains of Kazakhstan show that nomadic sheepherders played a surprisingly important role in the early spread of domesticated crops throughout a mountainous east-west corridor along the historic Silk Road... "Ancient wheat and broomcorn millet, recovered in nomadic campsites in Kazakhstan, show that prehistoric herders in Central Eurasia had incorporated both regional crops into their economy and rituals nearly 5,000 years ago, pushing back the chronology of interaction along the territory of the 'Silk Road' more than 2,000 years," Frachetti said... ...several strains of...

A new study has suggested that recently unearthed cities in Southern Siberia could rewrite Aryan history-as they are believed to be the original home of the Aryans. Twenty of the spiral-shaped settlements, believed to be the original home of the Aryan people, have been identified, and there are about 50 more suspected sites. They all lie buried in a region more than 640km long near Russia's border with Kazakhstan. The cities are apparently 3500-4000 years ago and are about the same size as several of the city-states of ancient Greece. If archaeologists confirm the cities as Aryan, they could be...

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. Archaeology 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...

Fragments of the Tocharian Between 1902 and 1914 the German Ethnological Institute sent repeated expeditions into the great Taklamakan desert of Central Asia, in search of ancient manuscripts that had survived destruction due to the arid climate of the Tarim Basin. One expedition brought back fragments of a manuscript written in a hitherto unknown language but employing a familiar North Indian script. Later dubbed Tocharian A, the language was deciphered by two linguists at Germany's Gottingen University, Emil Siel and Wilhem Siegling. The parchment turned out to be part of the Maitreyasamiti-Nataka, a Sanskrit Buddhist work in the Mahayana canon...

Ever since British jurist Sir William Jones noted in 1786 that there are marked similarities between diverse languages such as Greek, Sanskrit, and Celtic, linguists have assumed that most of the languages of Europe and the Indian subcontinent derive from a single ancient tongue. But researchers have fiercely debated just when and where this mother tongue was first spoken. Now a bold new study asserts that the common root of the 144 so-called Indo-European languages, which also include English and all the Germanic, Slavic, and Romance languages, is very ancient indeed. In this week's issue of Nature, evolutionary biologist Russell...

Burushaski is a language spoken in northern Pakistan and Kashmir. It is spoken by 40,000 to 50,000 people. It has no known relatives and some believe it maybe a remnant of a prehistoric language. Burushaski is like Ainu and Basque, language isolate with no known relatives. Language Museum Burushaski: An Extraordinary Language in the Karakoram MountainsWikipedia-Burushaski

A linguistics researcher at the Macquarie University in Australia has discovered that the language, known as Burushaski, which is spoken by about 90,000 people who reside in a remote area of Pakistan, is Indo-European in origin. Prof Ilija Casule’s discovery, which has now been verified by a number of the world’s top linguists, has excited linguistics experts around the world. An entire issue of the eminent international linguistics journal the Journal of Indo-European Studies is devoted to a discussion of his findings later this month. More than fifty eminent linguists have tried over many years to determine the genetic relationship...

Sheikh Javed Sindhi, who was engaged in research at the site, said that previously, 4,348 copper coins were excavated by R.D. Banerji, Sir John Marshall, and Mackay from 1922 to 1931. These coins belonged to the Kushan Period dating back to the 2 to 5 Century AD, he said...Rustam Bhutto, in-charge of the soil and water testing laboratory, said the treatment process for separating the amalgamated coins would take at least a month to make the figures and language on coins visible.Ali Haidar Gadhi, senior conservationist at said that Mr Banerji discovered nearly 2,000 coins, 338 of which were of...

...A team of early career researchers at the University of Cologne has succeeded in decoding a script that has been puzzling scholars for more than 70 years: the so-called "unknown Kushan script." ...Svenja Bonmann, Jakob Halfmann and Natalie Korobzow examined photographs of inscriptions found in caves as well as characters on bowls and clay pots from various Central Asian countries in order to put the pieces of the puzzle together.On 1 March 2023, they first announced their partial decipherment of the unknown Kushan script at an online conference of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Tajikistan. Currently, about...

A visit to Takht Bhai offers the chance to explore ruins dating back to the time of Kanishka, a Kushan emperor, famous for his military, political and spiritual feats.Buddhists offered prayers at the site and left statues to mark their gratitude once their wishes had been fulfilled, said Dr Shah Nazar Khan, from the Directorate of Archeology and Museums, K-P, while speaking to The Express Tribune. People visited the place in the final stages of life to meditate.Since the site is situated on top of a hill, it escaped the devastation wrought by successive invasions and is still well preserved,...

Mystery tribe comes to light in Shaanxi 03-25-2008 10:46 There is something amazing, standing at a museum observing exhibits hundreds and even thousands of years old. But how does one top the mystery of a lost civilization? Archaeologists believe they may have discovered evidence of a lost tribe, never before known in Chinese history. Archaeologists believe they may have discovered evidence of a lost tribe, never before known in Chinese history. The findings come from an excavation in northwest China's Shaanxi province. The site of what's believed to have been a major settlement is in Qishan county, Baoji city. There...

Archaeologists discover largest Kushan City Sites By By our correspondent 11/16/2007 PESHAWAR: A team of archaeologists led by Vice Chancellor of the Hazara University Prof Dr Ihsan Ali has discovered the remains of one of the largest Kushan city sites in Chittar Kot, Mansehra, the NWFP. The site Chittar Kot is located on a high spur overlooking the Biran River, offering one of the most spectacular views of the river and the surrounding area, a press release stated. The site is located at 34" 22.356' N and 73" 08.214' E at an elevation of 945 meters from mean sea level...

Underground ancient city found in Afghanistan Updated on 7/19/2002 12:02:39 PM Kabul (PPI): An underground ancient city, dating back to about 1,700 years ago, has recently been found in Lowgar Province in east of Afghanistan. The city belongs to the age of Kushan empire. Covering an area of 30 square kilometers, it is buried under a great heap of earth and stones. Lots of ruins of buildings can be found in the city which is located in the mountain areas of the province. The towers, walls and irrigation system of the city show its grandeur in the ancient time, said...