When we hear the word "mummy," we usually think "Egypt." But did you know that China's western desert has yielded a number of amazingly preserved mummies, as well?
The Tarim Basin is part of the forbidding Taklamakan Desert. (Taklamakan means "You go in, but you don't come out.") A people known as the Tocharians lived in the Tarim from about 2,000 BC to 200 AD. Over the past 100 years, the desert has gradually given up their perfectly mummified remains.
The problem for the Chinese government is that the mummies are dressed in what looks like Scottish woolen tartan. They have high nasal bridges, high cheekbones, red or blond hair, and the men have thick red beards. They are, in short, Europeans.
Why is that fact distressing to Beijing? Well, the Tarim Basin is part of Xinjiang Province, home of the restive Uighur minority. The Uighurs are Turkic Central Asians, and they want independence from China.
China claims that Xinjiang has always been part of the Chinese Empire, but the Uighurs counter that they were there first. The fair skin, blond hair and blue eyes of some Uighurs tends to connect them with the Tocharians, and bolsters their claim to traditional ownership of Xinjiang.
Typically, the government in Beijing does not allow much archaeological work on the mummies. They don't want scientists to prove the Uighurs' right to their desert home.
Photo by Aurel Stein, 1910, via Wikipedia.
Comments
The latest DNA analysis show very little if any link between the Tarim mummies and Uyghurs who migrated from Lake Baikal to Tarim some time in the 8 to 10th century. By contrast, the Hans ruled that area in 100-200BC. Sympathy for Uyghurs should not be counter to the facts. The Tocharians had nothing to do with the Uyghurs, who were a later invader of that area.
The Han Chinese did exert military control over the area in the period you indicate, but they did not settle there – it’s a tough place for anyone to live, and completely inappropriate for an agricultural society that depends on thirsty crops like rice or wheat.
The Uighurs, like most Central Asian peoples, come from a long line of mixed and inter-related nomadic groups that moved all over the steppes of eastern Central Asia. The Tocharians, who have several different genetic markers that are today found in Europe and in Siberia, were part of that mix as well.
Nobody has conclusively established where the Uighurs’ blue-eye genes came from, but they certainly are indicative of the well-mixed genetic melting pot that is Central Asia.
Before the development of energy resources in the region, the Tarim’s real value was only as a (rather unpleasant) leg of the Silk Road.