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The Taklamakan Mummies(Tocharian
mummies)
In the late 1980's, perfectly preserved 3000-year-old mummies began appearing
in a remote Taklamakan desert. They had long reddish-blond hair, European features
and didn't appear to be the ancestors of modern-day Chinese people.
Archaeologists now think they may have been the citizens of an ancient
civilization that existed at the crossroads between China and Europe.
Victor Mair, a specialist in the ancient corpses and co-author of “Mummies of
the Tarim Basin”, said:"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.”
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 the second millennium BC,
the oldest mummies, like the Loulan Beauty, were the earliest settlers in the
Tarim Basin.
Mummies of "Tomb 2"
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The first Tocharian Nordic mummy found
in 1989: a
White female with long blond hair, finely preserved by the arid desert
atmosphere of the Taklamakan desert. Based on her partially
dismembered limbs and gouged out eyes, archaeologists believe she
was a sacrificial victim. |
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This mummified boy, approximately one-year-old, was found in the same grave. He,
too, is believed to have been a sacrificial victim who was buried alive. |
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A Tocharian female mummy with
long flaxen blond hair, perfectly preserved in ponytails. Items of weaved
material, identical to Celtic cloth, definitively proved the Indo-European
origins of the Tocharians, who not only built the fantastic Silk Road cities
which today lie deserted, but who are also credited with bringing Buddhism,
horses, the saddle, and iron working to China. This mummy was approximately
40-years old, was found in the main chamber of the same tomb. Her tall
stature, high nose, and red hair indicate that she was of European descent. |
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Mummies from the Wupu cemetery
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This mummy of an 18 to 20 year old woman is on display at a museum in Khumul. Her
features, particularly her overbite, indicate Caucasian heritage. |
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A Tocharian man with red-blond hair; his clear
European features still visible after nearly 3,500 years in his desert grave in
Taklamakan. This mummified man was approximately 40 years old at the time of his death.
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Source:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/chinamum/taklamakan.html
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"Cherchen Man" and Family (China)
A family of immaculately preserved, 3,000-year-old
caucasian mummies were found in East Turkistan, in 1978. Though it was
commonly believed that the first contact between East Turkistan and the West
occurred relatively late in world history — around the middle of the
second century B.C. — carbon dating has shown that the Cherchen man and
his family died 900 years earlier. They were preserved naturally by the
salty and dry Chinese landscape.
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Source:
http://tlc.discovery.com/convergence/mummies/countdown/countdown.html
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Meanwhile, Yingpan Man, a nearly perfectly
preserved 2,000-year-old Caucasoid mummy, 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.
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Source:
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/todaysfeatures/2005/April/todaysfeatures_April37.xml§ion=todaysfeatures